Buddha's Bday!

Today was like, the greatest day! We knew that the students would be going to a Wat on Friday morning and cleaning the school in the afternoon but not much else, as usual. When we got to school all of the students had bags full of food and offerings.  After assembly, a van arrived with 18 monks from the local Wats.  They sat at the head of the assembly and said some prayers and chanted, it was really cool.  Then the monks split up, 9 and 9, and stood in lines with bowls.  The students and teachers all waited in line and put all of the food they brought in each of their bowls.  At the end the pile was HUGE!  Some of the food is for the monks but some is also for the needy, it's like a real life canned food drive.  Nanglak and Nangnoot invited us to give some of the food they brought to the monks.  They told us giving food to the monks is good luck.  Before you reach the monks in the long line of people, you take off your shoes, I love that you barely wear shoes in Thailand. After we did this, they wanted us to take a bunch of pictures. Every person who had a camera wanted the farangs in the picture, it was pretty funny.
Then, Nanglak drove us to the main famous temple in Phrae, Wat Phra Bat Ming Mueang.  The students all have to walk to the temples and different grades were at different Wats around Phrae. Nanglak took us to a restaurant first and got us some traditional Thai desserts, i liked but didn't love..and fried bananas! LOVE. Then we went to the temple! The students were already there and praying in the temple.  Mel and I were just walking around trying not to get in anybody's way when a monk walked up to us and asked us where we were from! We were so surprised! He offered to show us around and we took him up on the offer immediately! He showed us the Buddha's footprint, which is huge, and told us about the most recent head monk, who died last year.  He even took us in the temple when they were praying, it was seriously cool. He was excited because he learned English at Wat Metang, full circle!
This was such a great day, and one of the reasons why I am here, to learn about the Thai culture.  I LOVED IT! We have to go catch our bus to Chiang Mai! Love you all!