My temple has the biggest Buddha

- creeper monk.

The end of the weekend and beginning of this week was full of flirtatious males and group drama.  It all makes for some pretty fantastic stories, so here goes. I may or may not use pseudonyms in the following story (or subsequent posts to be honest).

First off, Saturday started with a knock on my door around 7:30 a.m. It was Vera coming to ask if we had seen Michelle.  Turns out we hadn't, since we had been... you know... sleeping. Vera says "I don't think she came home last night because her bed is still made.  I don't know where she is.  And really I don't remember how I got home" from the club many had been out at with one of our Maw Chaw buddies the night before. Uh-oh. 

I get up, throw on a sweatshirt, and meet V. in the hallway.  We wake up others of our group to get professors room numbers, and then V. suggests we go talk to Ian, because she's pretty sure Ian brought her home from the club, and maybe he knows where Michelle is.  So we traipse upstairs barefoot in pjs and knock on the boys' door.  Later they told us about the conversation they had when the knocking began:

*knock-knock-knock*

"Ian, I think there's someone at the door."

"No there's not."

*knock-knock-knock-knock-knock*

"Yeah I think there is.  You should answer it."

"No.... Fine."

So Ian gets up and answers the door, despite his roommate's bed being closer to the door. 

Once Ian opens the door, we explain how Michelle is missing, and does he know where she is?  He does not, but has our CMU buddy's phone number, and suggests we call her.  I want to rip him a new one for leaving an intoxicated Michelle behind at a foreign club, but manage to restrain my self. Vera calls Thai Buddy, who also doesn't know where Michelle is, but promises to call back. 

A few phone calls later we find out Michelle is at Maw Chaw with Thai Buddy's guy friends, and they bring M. home on the back of a motorcycle shortly thereafter.  I'm left struggling with the fact that one person got left alone at a foreign club. I mean, it's girl code to not do that in the states... That means it should doubly not be done in another country.  Right?

The next day, roommates start fighting and growing sick of each other.  A general consensus has developed that us chicas are shifting around when we leave for our weekend trip to Laos, and then again when we go to Vietnam. 

Mere hours later, teasing goes too far and others of our group are fighting.  That made twice in one day that I wandered off with another person, to allow them time to vent, away from the group.  Lucky for me, I'm not yet sick of anyone.  And I got to eat amazing food and delicious shakes while out on our two-some adventures. 

Then, Monday morning our profs get into an argument before class.  It was like watching the parents fight... No good. 

After Monday, the fighting cooled down and the flirting started.  

Tuesday (1/27) Emily, Patricia and I walked to a wat near CMU campus called Wat Suan Dok.  Suan Dok was the first wat to hold monk chats as a tool to help their monk university students studying English to learn more easily.  Suan Dok also holds weekly meditation retreats, which a bunch of us are interested in attending and we had gone to try to find out more information.  Along the way we met a handful of really sketchy monks.  First, as we were walking, we ended up behind a monk who asked us if we were going to Suan Dok.  When we said yes, he offered to walk us in... and then took us to the back gate... and asked us to donate to the wat... Really this wasn't so strange yet, but then he took things from our hands.  Monks aren't supposed to do that... We decided that we probably still made merit for donating, even if he pocketed our 20 baht each.  

Once inside the wat, we had a hard time finding anyone who spoke english, and as we were debating sticking around until the monk chat started to get information about the meditation retreats or coming back the next day, a group of younger monks calls out - "Hey! Hey! Come over here!" - complete with typical catcall inflection.  But hey, this was a wat, they were monks right?  They probably meant well... didn't realize how they sounded. So we walked over to where they were, giggling a little bit, and sat down to chat.  

The first thing they wanted to know about was whether or not we knew languages other than English and a little Thai.  We answer Spanish (P. and me) and Latin (Em).  Maybe it was just to keep the conversation going, maybe not... but the next question out of the monks was "What does 'bonita' mean?" And then, "How do you say you are beautiful? ... Can you write that down for me?" From there we discuss how most of the monks at the university will not stay monks and fully ordain after graduation (in a couple of weeks), how monks don't usually interact with women, the differences between robe colors (there is none, just a temple's or a monk's choice).  Then Mr. "Bonita" Monk has to leave and tells us "Ustedes estan bonitas Americans."  Hmm... 

We continue to chat with the other monks, discussing how everything can be an act of meditation, so long as you remain in the present moment - not overly attached to the past, or concerned about the future.  Just present, here, now.  The monk suggests we should come visit his temple because it is the most beautiful and has the biggest Buddha.  He is very insistent that we need to come to his temple to see this Buddha, telling us the temple never closes, it's open all night. After an hour of flirtatious conversation, we're starting to chuckle to each other between comments about the size of the Buddha.  He was just so insistent, both in his flirtations, implying that he wasn't going to be a monk in another month, and inviting us for a night-time visit to his temple... It was a little sketch.  And as we left a lot of inappropriate jokes were made, probably undoing any merit we had gained by donating to the temple on our way in.

When we stopped at his temple, Montien, on the way home, we were kind of disappointed; the temple was beautiful, but the size of the Buddha was much exaggerated.  

That night Gen, Kacie and I went back to the jazz club near our guesthouse. Gen secretly (or not so secretly) has a crush on the saxophone player who runs the club, so she goes almost every night, if even for a little while. I hadn't been out for a few days and was ahead on reading, so I decided to go.  Kacie had a crap day and wanted to blow off steam, so she started buying shots.  Then we started getting hit on by a 30-something guy from Chiang Mai, working for Shell in Bangkok, who was back in Chiang Mai on business.  As Patricia dropped Emily off into my care, Mr. Shell Oil bought the second round of shots and then left. Thankfully. 

While Gen was eyeing the saxophonist, I had noticed the guitarist.  The two of us sat and watched them play a set, while Kacie and Emily ventured to the second floor loft, where you get to graffiti the walls.  As it wound towards closing time and Gen went to seize the chance to talk to her sax player, Emily and I wandered inside and found ourselves next to another college-aged American - the guitarist!  As we were talking about what brought us all to Thailand, Z. (that's what I'm gonna call him) asked where we went to school, and got excited when we said Coe.  That seemed strange, so we asked how he knew about Coe. Turns out, Z. was one of the co-founders of Banaa, a student movement that began at George Washington University to bring survivors of the various conflicts in Sudan, and particularly Darfur, to the U.S. to study.  Apparently Coe has agreed to finance a scholarship for a Banaa scholar to come to Coe sometime next year.  I hadn't yet heard this but it makes me SO happy.  Z. is also an excellent activist contact to have and was fun to talk to. And Gen made first contact with the Sax Player, Kacie ended up in a better mood, so all in all it was an excellent evening. 

First Days in Chiang Mai

Sunday (1/18) we arrived in Chiang Mai, via train from Bangkok. We all looked a bit worse for wear after spending a night on the train and wanted nothing more than to reach the guesthouse so we could shower and change clothes. But these thoughts were temporarily driven from our minds by the amazing welcoming committee from the university that met us at the train station. Two professors and four students came. If I understood everything right, the profs were our program director and one of our Thai professors, and the students are going to serve as our official guides to Chiang Mai University and city. They helped us with our luggage and into song-taows (red pick-up trucks with the bed converted into benches - they serve as busses around Chiang Mai) and brought us garlands that are some kind of buddhist good-luck charm.

The city of Chiang Mai has an old city and a new city. The old city lies in the southwest quadrant of the whole of Chiang Mai and is separated from the new city by a brick wall in varying states of still standing to decrepit. The wall originally fortified the city against attack. Outside the wall lies a moat, again originally built to further protect the city. Now the moat has fountains and fish and at least portions of it are being used to test a new water quality regimen.

The old city wall has four original gates, one for each cardinal direction. Our guesthouse (Mountain View Guesthouse) is located just inside the north gate, also known as Chang Puak Gate (or White Elephant Gate in English). Once we had showered, changed clothes and relaxed a bit after the train ride, we trekked from the north gate to the new city side of the east gate for a Sunday night walking market. This market was HUGE. It takes over a square that is a daily market and then the next four or five blocks as well. Nikki, Gen and I wandered the market together, haggling for some deals and trying to take in as much as we could. I have some pictures of the crowd and street musicians, which I will post as soon as I can get pictures off my camera (I apparently forgot my cord stateside).

On our way back from the market we got lost and decided to ask for directions after hitting a handful of dead ends and finding ourselves next to the prison. It turns out we really were only a couple of blocks too far west and not far enough north.

Monday (1/19) we started our lives as Chiang Mai University students. That morning I couldn't wait to go downstairs and see us all in our matching black and white outfits! It was really strange to see everone in uniforms when I was used to them in colorful sweats, but still familiar because the Chiang Mai University (CMU) uniforms are very similar to the uniform I wore in high school. Mostly though, I was just really excited for Thai class and to re-meet our CMU buddies (picture will appear shortly!).

When we first arrived we met with the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. Rather than "departments," each section of the school are called "faculties" here. The Dean welcomed us and told us a bit about CMU and the FoH in particular. The faculty was founded in the 1960s and has grown significantly since then. This year, they graduated 5000 undergrad students and 300 grad students from that Faculty alone. At CMU (or Maw Chaw as the locals call it) Humanities includes Psychology, Foreign Languages, Thai Lit and Language, Home Economics, History, Philosophy and Religion.

After our introduction from the Dean, we reunited with our Thai buddies - DiDi, Mo, Mai (or Jessi - because she likes Jessica Alba), and Pan - who are actually French students. After mingling over coffee and potato filled pastries, we boarded a purple, elongated golf cart for a tour of CMU campus. The purple golf carts serve as the campus busses and seat about 10-12 people. We saw all the different Faculties' buildings, trekked around the campus lake, tried CMU milkshakes (made by the Faculty of Agriculture students), and discussed life as a CMU versus a Coe student. One of my favorite moments was walking back from the lake. Chris confessed he had the song "Part of Your World" from the Little Mermaid stuck in his head and a few of us started belting out as much of the song as we could remember. When we stopped at one point, at a loss as to what lyrics came next, DiDi jumped in and continued the sing-a-long with us. Disney had it at least partially right with that "small world" business.

Once we finished our tour, we went to the Student Union to look around an perhaps buy lunch. We also aquired our fifth unofficial buddy, DiDi's friend Top. While at the Union we stopped in the campus store, where everything is lavender and elephants. Eating at CMU was also a bit of an adventure because it was one of the few places we've been so far that had no English at all around the food stands. I eventually let Jessi order for me.

Lunch also provided this gem from Top: "I usually eat my rice with food." - said to Holly who was the first to come down with the stomach ailment this year and decided to just have white rice for lunch.

After pointing out the best place on campus to get coffee (HB7 for 10 baht), our buddies left so that we could start Thai language class. This first day we just learned the phonetics of the language. For a taste of Thai - try to tell the difference between a "t" in say Text versus a "t" in for example Still. They are two different consonants in Thai. Now repeat that distinction with "p" and "k." And imagine a vowel that sounds like getting punched in the gut. Yeah. This is going well.

After class we met back up with our buddies and got ice cream. Mo and Jessi marked many of their favorite sights and hangouts on our maps, so we are never at a loss for places to visit. Still waiting for the perfect opportunity to go to the nightclub with Mo though.