School Trip

This weekend is the Buddhist Lent festival, and today the children at the centre we are working with this week went to the temple to celebrate, together with the local school and many other members of the community.

All dressed up and ready to go!

We set off at 9.00 and walked the few yards down the road to the temple. No one else had arrived, as the rest of the gathering were first processing around the village with music and floats, so we sat down to wait... and wait.... and wait. The children amused themselves by running around the open space of the temple and climbing on the furniture, as 3-year old children will.

Arriving at the temple

They sat down quietly for a few minutes at least!

 

These chairs were great for climbing on

 

Around 10.00 the teacher in me began to think "These children are all going to start needing the toilet soon. I hope we don't get lots of little puddles on the temple floor..." By 10.30 there was still no sign of anything happening, so a decision was made to take the children back to the centre and give them an early lunch and then return when the procession arrived.

The children duly had their lunch, we sang our entire repertoire of songs with the ukulele and they sat down to watch TV while the teachers had some lunch, before the procession finally appeared at mid-day going down the road past the centre.

We all trooped back to the temple to join the ceremony, which is one of bringing gifts of money and food to the temple. It also seems to involve spectacularly large candles.

 

 Something happening at last!

 

 The arrival of the giant candle

 

The leaves of these decorative "trees" are bank notes.  Visually creative giving!

It was not an especially long ceremony, but one little girl did fall asleep, and who can blame her - that is their usual routine after lunch!