Thursday, February 6, 2014

Sacred Arts Day Three..... learning


The Sacred Arts Tour pageant was last night and marks the opening of the monks visit to Chapel Hill. It was nice to see my pals Laura and Shannon and Shannon's husband at the pageant last night. It was fun and light hearted and a great way to start the week of the sand mandala construction. 

We all had breakfast together yesterday morning. Bread, not toasted, with butter, hot tea with milk. Some fruit. That's it. Low effort guests. They were picked up at 10am and left for the day to prepare for the pageant. Jamphel requested English lessons, so Wesley and I went to the bookstore and got some vocabulary and grammar books for him.  

monk's shoes with ours at the door

After the pageant, Jamphel and Tashi rode home with us and they insisted on preparing noodles for us. 10 pm and I am sitting at my kitchen table eating the spiciest noodles I have ever had in my life with two Tibetan monks and my daughter, who was swooning. My lips were burning, but it was good and we ate and laughed and told stories. They have installed a Tibetan dictionary and keypad on my ipad and we practiced each others languages over noodles. We stayed up late into the night talking about the Chinese invasion of Tibet, we saw photos of Jamphel's family, their sheep and yaks. They are nomads in Tibet and live in a yak tent. I want to visit them!



 If you had a kid in the public school system in the past twenty years, chances are you know what sight words are. Wesley learned to read by using sight words, basically flash card reading. We made Jamphel a sight word booklet that he can write words in, English on one side, Tibetan on the other. He changed it up a bit and wanted to add sentences.


This morning we got up, had bread and tea and Wesley began English class. My beautiful daughter, sitting at our kitchen table, teaching a Buddhist monk to write and read English. As I type, Tashi is meditating in Wesley's room and Jamphel is studying his English and doing his assigned homework.

In other news, Gerry had to go out on the Dan River yesterday and photograph the coal ash spill that dumped 80 tons of coal ash into our beautiful NC river. So he missed out on the fun, but he is here today, so he can spend some time with our amazing guests.

Here is a great slideshow from the Washington Post about the spill. What a mess.


6 comments:

cookingwithgas said...

amazing- you are living a life of wonder.

Judi Tavill said...

This is SO great!I would like to host some monks!!!!

Michèle Hastings said...

Thank you for sharing your week with us!

... and yeah those are lip burning noodles, we buy them at the international market in G'boro.

jffollies said...

So I was starting to envy your life but thought "that's not very Zen". Beautiful and so happy so much good is coming your way.

jffollies said...

So I was starting to envy your life but thought "that's not very Zen". Beautiful and so happy so much good is coming your way.

Dennis Allen said...

What a wonderful experience you are having.