Monk Farewell Party

Today a few of us returned to Wat Suan Dok to attend a farewell party for our monk friends who are graduating from Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University. We could only stay for about an hour since we had classes today, but we were able to attend part of a ceremony and ate lunch with our monk friends. During the ceremony there was chanting and the calling of spirits. In some of the photos you can see the white string that is wrapped around one's wrist or lying over one's shoulder during the ceremony. This string can be seen in many Buddhist ceremonies and represents the goods spirits that are called back that grant good luck and good health for the future. After the ceremony for the graduates we took a lot of pictures. We took a few with our closest monk friend, Lat, but also were asked to pose in photos with many other monks, many who we had never spoken to before. You might notice that we are standing away from the monks in the photos, and that is because females are not allowed to touch the monks. After the paparazzi finished taking our photos, we had a quick lunch before saying goodbye. We had to say goodbye to a few of our monk friends, but Lat will be in Chiang Mai for a few more weeks so hopefully we will be seeing him again. 

A dog joins for the ceremony as well.

Farewell ceremony.

Lat

me with Lat and Tammy

Tying the "quan" (white string) on the wrist.