Chiang Mai Adventures in Learning: Conversations with Monks and The Planetarium

During a conversation with the family we met from China, we were discussing education. They expressed that school in China is very rigorous. The school day often starts around 7am and does not end until 9pm. When they inquired about what our kids are currently doing for school, I don’t think they truly understood. I’m not sure if this was due to a language barrier or the actual concept of homeschooling being absurd to them. Like I’ve said before though, this year has taught me there’s no right way to get an education. We had two very fun learning adventures this week. Yesterday we visited a local temple where we were able to engage in conversation with monk students and for Field Trip Friday today we visited the Chiang Mai Planetarium.

Monk Chats

Braxton is currently doing a research project on what life is like as a monk. As part of his research, we visited a local temple where you can engage in what they call “monk chats”. This is where you can converse with monk students, ask them questions, and help them to practice their English. Braxton prepared a list of questions ahead of time and was excited to get his questions answered.

The monks we spoke to were sixteen and seventeen, and live at the monk school within the temple. They didn’t speak very much English, but used Google translate when needed. One of the students was from Myanmar and the other was local, from Thailand. Braxton asked questions about their daily routine and what one has to do to become a monk. They asked us questions about where we live and Braxton showed them on the map.

They also asked how the United States was different compared to Thailand, and we were surprised how long it took us to come up with significant differences. The conversation was somewhat difficult to get flowing, which was probably a combination of their age and the language barrier. Something that really surprised me was that two of the monks were on their phones playing games the entire time. For some reason I had assumed phones would be off limits. I guess aside from their monk duties they are still just your average teenager. We all really enjoyed this unique experience, and Braxton got most of his questions answered.

Chiang Mai Planetarium

Today we visited the Chiang Mai Planetarium. It’s always interesting to see the variation in science museums by country, and Dave and Braxton never tire of things related to space.

We all enjoyed exploring the various hands on exhibits. They had entire section about the workings of the air traffic control system, which I thought was very interesting. The entire museum was free, with the exception of the planetarium show.

We ate lunch at the museum restaurant, where our meals were delivered by a robot!

Encountering Local Students

The museum was packed with different schools on field trips. We were quite the novelty and had no less than ten different students wave and enthusiastically say “hello” to us. I think they really just wanted to use the little bit of English they know, but regardless it was very friendly. While Alexis and I were in the bathroom, we had a group of girls say hello. When I said hello back to them in Thai they all clapped and cheered. One girl told Alexis she was very beautiful, and Alexis is pretty sure they were taking a video of her. We hadn’t gotten attention like this since we were in the Philippines.

All the student wore matching uniforms including their shoes. Something else we noticed was that the middle school age girls (we think that was their age) all had their hair braided in two french braids. The older girls (we assumed high school age) had their hair in a pony tail with a white bow. I’m guessing this is also considered part of their uniform. I think a uniform definitely eliminates decision fatigue and makes everyone equal. I had never considered taking it as far as hairstyles too.

A Beautiful View

Outside the planetarium was a beautiful view of the mountains. We enjoyed the view as we waited for a Grab to pick us up. We have found it difficult at times to get a ride here and have spent a good amount of time waiting. You can’t complain though when you have a view like this!