You can't make this stuff up

During our orientation in May our HR director humored us with stories about all the random situations he has found himself in since being in Thailand. He had the whole room rolling when he told us that once he was taken to a funeral of a person he had never met. Apparently one of the teachers at his school had him come to their family members funeral service. All within the first week he was teaching. . .as for us, it took a couple months before we were invited.

On Monday we heard that our director's father passed away over the weekend. There was talk about a few Thai teachers going to pay their respects the next day. As I was making my way out of a class Tuesday morning one of the teachers came up to me and said "You know about director's father?"

"Oh. Yes. I heard he passed away," I nod.

"Ok. I see you wear black and white for cremation service," the teacher comments.

Um. What. . . I nod again, but am a little confused considering I wear black and white pretty much everyday (nun outfits).

Then the teacher states "Ok we will come to get you from office this afternoon when we go to the temple to pay respect."

Oh my.

A few hours later, I am riding in a 15-person van, chugging down the highway towards a Wat out in the middle of nowwhere. Still a little confused as to what is going on, I get out of the van with the other teachers and decided to just observe and do what everyone else does.

Each person takes off their shoes before walking up some steps into part of the building where there is a picture of the director's father and about 30 of the most elaborate flower arrangements. Everyone forms a line and is handed a stick that they light and hold up near their face while keeping their hands folded in prayer. One at a time everyone walks up to the picture, pauses for a moment while closing their eyes, then places the burning stick into a big golden bowl filled with sand. We follow suit while one of the Thai teachers takes about a million pictures of us. Little strange. A little later we saw the director. Our department head begins nudging J telling her to say she's sorry about his father. So we all "wai" to him and tell him we are sorry. Still a little awkward about the situation, we stand around for a minute waiting to see what would happen next. At that point they sit us down at a table and serve us a scoop of green tea ice cream. About five minutes later everyone just stands up, heads back to the van and we leave. Never thought I would have that added to my list of things that I've done in Thailand. But it was a good little cultural experience.

It's been a common occurance for J and I to look at eachother, just smile and shake our heads thinking, "What is going on?" Thailand has proven to be a strange strange place. . .our list of random experiences just continues to grow. . .