Valentines day and how to upset senior monks

Valentine's day here is celebrated with an explosion of flowers. Everywhere you walked there were stalls selling red roses - about every 20 yards it seemed. I started the day with a text message from a married man with a picture of a rose and the message that he was missing me. I was a touch surprised, but turns out this is fine - probably just a friendship thing! Many phone calls, and texts followed during the day wishing me a happy valentine's day - including from novice monks! And then my students gave me loads of heart shaped sweets. Some came early to class to give me the sweets, others left after class, then came back to the classroom to hand me beautifully wrapped chocolates and sweeties. Most of the male teachers received roses from their students.

Then the following day I went to a novices inordination as a monk. He had been getting so excited about this and wanted lots of photos to give to his family. I turned up early and checked with him where I could walk, where I could stand, where I could sit and whether there were any other potential problems. Basically as long as I didn't go on the platform where the monks sit, there were no restrictions and he wanted as many photos as possible.

His alms bowl was wrapped up in white cloth that was twisted into a weird shape - it looked like a bad attempt at making a chicken shape. It transpired it was to represent the Nagar, which watches over us all. We walked three times around the temple, following the three novices who were being ordained. A gong was 'played' and the women whooped as they threw rice wrapped in 5,000 kip notes. Everyone scrambled to get the note as it landed in the procession.

Then into the temple. The ceremony lasted around an hour. It was swelteringly hot - the weather has changed dramatically over the last few days, and none of the fans were switched on so everyone sweated profusely. I took heaps of photos, but suddenly started getting really bad looks from the monks and hand signals to indicate I should go and sit down and stop taking photos immediately. I had no idea what the problem was and assumed I'd just taken too many for the Abbot's taste. So I put my camera down and sat down to watch the rest of the ceremony. It was amazing - lots of chanting, bowing to the Buddha, and general Buddhist stuff. (Whatever that may be). Afterwards I apologised for whatever I'd done wrong. It transpired that standing up during chanting so that your head is above a monks head is a major no no! Just a pity I didn't know that - still, I will next time!

One of the senior guys at the school I work for has tentitively suggested holding an exhibition of my photos - it might not happen but if it does - wow - I'm very excited. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jolidbetter/)

I'm off to two weddings and a party this weekend - that should be good for photo opps - I'll update my flickr account soon.

The Laos classes are going well. I'm really loving the reading - I'm really slow, but getting faster. Hopeless at remembering the conversation part of it though - strange one - I would have thought that I would have been better at that bit than at reading. I get confused from time to time and keep accidently using the word for penis instead of buffalo or other such faux pas (and you'd be amazed how often the word buffalo comes up in conversation!

Anyway, better go now, more soon.

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