Temple life + helping refugees

Went to help refugees twice. First they came to the border where we gave them food and blankets, they seemed to be normal people, just a little bit dirty. Second time we went to see Burmese refugees in their houses at the orange farms. These people have no rights in Thailand (they're illegal aliens) but are fleeing from the military in their own country. They then proceed to work on the orange fields for 1,5 euros a day, working with dangerous chemicals (which they don't know about, because they don't speak Thai). Because of the chemicals there's a lot of birth defects among them.

The second house was really bad. It was basically a big concrete structure that was open on one side and they had nothing to protect them from the cold (gets around 5 degrees here at night). One 11 year old girl had a problem with her shoulder (looked like a birth defect), but she was still made to work full day shifts out in the fields. Astonishingly some of these people still managed to seem quite happy. I'm not one to use this expression very easily, but it broke my heart.

Three of us that went were novice monks that were of the same people as the Refugees (Shan) and used to live in the same manner. The refugees very much liked to see that one of them had become a Buddhist monk (they are VERY highly regarded in Burma and Thailand).

As cliche as it is, this has made a big impression on me and has definitely changed my idea's about charity. Don't get me wrong, I still believe that charity is not per definition a good thing, it tends to bring along a lot of pity and arrogance that does more harm than good. In this form however, with the mind set I see in the people that do it here, it can only be good.

Temple life
Very chilled out. On a normal day I will do a bunch of the following activities: read a couple of hours, meditate a lot (either sitting or walking), have lunch or sit around (with my fellow visitors, my Dhamma teacher, the (Thai) English teacher and people from the Blood foundations), take Dhamma lessons, get a Thai massage or go to evening chanting.

Today I went up to 8 precepts. The 8 precepts are the basic Buddhist training rules (you don't go to hell if you break them), which include: no meals after 12, no sex, no drinking, no killing, no lying, no perfume and pretty clothing, no comfortable chairs and beds, no dancing, partying, or singing. Except for the meals it doesn't make much of a difference to how I was living already. I had to learn some Pali (ancient language) and chant that at the ceremony. Spent quite some time on that and it ended up going quite well I thought. The dude, doing the ceremony was younger than me, which was a little strange, but our Abbot is out of town.

Oh, when I got the Thai massage, there was a 1 year old girl and there's something about Asian kids that is ridiculously cute. They own white babies in every sense when it comes to cuteness. So this one was helping to massage me, she would just push against my leg :P And the massage lady would say "Fallang" (Foreigner, but mainly western foreigners) and the little girl would point at my face :P Aww.