Teaching Buddhist Monks

[PK]

Today Isara started teaching young Buddhist monks at a temple outside of Nong Khai. This particular temple provides housing, food, and education to orphaned children. They study regular classes, as monks, until they are old enough to decide whether they want to leave and work or continue being a monk.



As always the students were friendly and very welcoming. Can't say the same for Jimmy, the big dog inside the classroom. lol

We will go back again tomorrow and continue to teach every Saturday and Sunday.
-pk

[Ming]

Great thing to do Pk. I'm sure you didn't teach them only English
cause you always teaching about life and much more than English.
I know those Thai monks will like the way you teach and educate them more about things out here.
Have fun and good time teaching.
Woohoo! 

[KitKat]

This is a very worthwhile project for Isara.
 Now ILC is teaching 7 days a week. Wow!

Why are there so many orphaned children in Thailand? This question is often presented to me and I really didn't have an answer. 
 

[Ming]

Sorry Pk you will be so busy teaching everyday now but it's only going to be for a month or so. This I don't know yet but I hope you can learn something more about Thai from the different groups of people.

Thailand is still not good with family planning and now-a-days things have changed a lot. The teenagers need more education and more responsibility. In fact there are not many orphaned children here but there are a lot of poor families. If a boys  family can't support him to study they send him to be monk to continue his education for free. Here they have a lot of monk schools.

And also we're developing the wrong way now so that doesn't help things. Thais need to learn a lot more about human developing and so much about developing technology. I mean if we have high quality technology then the person who uses it has to know how to use it in the right way. It looks so difficult to help this. It starts from family and the community to do the right way to develop, but I'm still hoping that every little thing we do to help can make a difference in the near future.

 

[Ginafish]

Pk, I think you should shave your head to fit in with the monks. Seriously, I think it's great that you are continuously thinking of new ways to reach and educate the community. Educating the monks is great because it gets them while they are young! Just curious, do you ever use the English lessons to teach about Helmet safety?

[PK]

Just curious, do you ever use the English lessons to teach about Helmet safety?

Heck yea! Almost each lesson mentions helmet(muak-ga-nok). Also there are signs outside that encourage people to wear helmets and also photos inside the ILC from our helmet donation projects. I think it's safe to say all our students know we're helmet crazy. Some of them will even write about helmets in their homework because they know I'll give them extra points. lol


Ginafish - The thought of shaving my head did cross my mind while teaching them yesterday. Hmmm Maybe next year.

[Sean]

...Some of them will even write about helmets in their homework because they know I'll give them extra points. lol

Ha! I love it.

[Ginafish]

I had a couple of professors like that in college, but I didn't write about helmet safety. And go ahead and have a monk shave your head for you. He'll do it the right way. Hair - the only thing you can change with certainty that it will eventually look the way it always did. Pretty much.

[PK]

Please no more "shave your head" posts. The peer pressure is becoming too much.

On Sunday we taught the monks again and there were twice as many students as Saturday. I guess that means they like us. lol



And here's some photos of the new temple they're building and of their chedi.

[KitKat]

Where is their new temple located, maybe a little outside of Nongkhai?
Thank you for the link about their chedi. It was very interesting. Can you help with how it is pronounced?

 

[PK]

The temple is located about 20 miles southwest of Nong Khai. The grounds there are beautiful. There's a small lake and a hill (where the chedi is) and it's landscaped very well. Tourists (mostly Thai) stop to take photos of some of the structures. So there must be something of significance located there but I haven't asked yet.

Chedi is pronounce ch-ed-ee (rhymes with "ready").

[KitKat]

PK, thanks for all the info and especially the ch-ed-ee!