Sunday, April 2, 2006

   I Went to a Vietnamese Buddhist Temple Festival!!!

<bgsound src="http://prophecymoon.tripod.com/cab.mp3" volume=100 loop=1 autostart=false> Enya Caribbean Blue

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Start: 10:39 PM CST Hey guys! I had SO MUCH FUN!!! Ah, the temple was so pretty!!! ^^ (I wish I had brung a camera!!! *screams*) Oh yeah... Today's April Fool's Day... Yeah... But really, I don't celebrate it. And it really doesn't feel like it. XP Oh yeah! I'll also post about Friday, but after Saturday. (What a weird order. XP) I need to post daily...and not be lazy and clump days together... -_-;; Saturday Well, when I first woke up, my clock was messed up. That's when I learned that there was a power surge during the night. So when I first woke up, I heard my mom to get ready and stuff 'cause a priest/monk was gonna come. (But really, he never came.) In the meanwhile, I asked my mom if she could drive me to Best Buy so I can buy some stuff. I planned on buying "Grave of the Fireflies" and "Kingdom Hearts", but since my brother wanted "Kingdom Hearts", I told him to give me $30 so I could go and buy it for him. He got cheap and said that he didn't want to buy it anymore. (He had $150!!!) He said he wanted our mom to buy it FOR HIM. -_-;; Also, I wanted to buy "Neopets: The Darkest Faerie"... Well, when I did get to Best Buy, my mom left me just for a bit to go by the bank. So when I came in, I asked the people who worked there to show me where "Kingdom Hearts" was. He even asked me if it was the new one or old one. XP Oh yeah! There was a sale in Best Buy. Buy two PS2 video games and they only cost $30! But it was the ones that said "Greatest Hits". So to take advantage of the sale, I also bought "Final Fantasy X". I also got that same guy to show me where the anime section is. I started to look for "Grave of the Fireflies", but I couldn't find it, so I got that same guy to look it up, and they didn't have any in stock... Aww... Oh yeah. "Neopets: The Darkest Faerie" was $39.99, and plus the others which was $30, I didn't bring enough. ^^;; Well, I'll finish those two games and then I'll buy it. XP (That'll keep me REAL BUSY, 'cause it takes me years to finish one video game. I'm not lying here!) Well, when I went to go pay for it, the guy asked me "Hey, that's a good game." (He pointed at "Final Fantasy X"...) "How come you didn't buy 'Final Fantasy X-2'?" (Wow! People who work here LOVE video games and actually KNOW ABOUT THEM!!! o_O!!!) He almost charged me full price for the games until I reminded him about the sale. ^^;; Well, I left the store and I passed my mom's van once because I thought she was still at the bank. XP Well, I learned that yesterday when my mom and dad left me, they took my mom's friends from Sa Dec (It's in Vietnam!) to a Vietnamese Buddhist festival at a local Buddhist temple and left me there!!! (I LOVE FESTIVALS!!! HOW COULD THEY LEAVE ME?!?!) They had water lotus lanterns... *sniffs* It's like you take a candle, light it up, put it inside a lantern and float it down the water... It's so pretty... ^^ (Do you guys know the part in "Final Fantasy X" when Yuna walks on the water with all those lantern/coffins floating her and she's summoning all the spirits? It ALMOST looks like that. XP) Well, after that, I went home, and I played a bit of "Kingdom Hearts", but it got boring to me, so I went on the computer and did random things like check out MyOtaku a bit (There's a CREEPY new logo on the theOtaku main site!!! It's JAMES!!! AS FAYE!!! *screams*) and just skim through random sites... Nothing to do really. Really, to the point where I even ACTUALLY GOT OFF THE COMPUTER BECAUSE I WAS BORED! ...Wait. That's actually been happening a lot... Oh well. Well, I started to get ready to go to the temple. ACTUALLY, before that, I noticed I haven't really got the chance to go buy new clothes. So I asked my mom if we could go to the mall so I could buy some. But she said we only had two hours before the festival started. (It was 5 PM and the festival started at 7 PM.) Well, I decided not to go and spent the rest of the time listening to music on the computer. But by 6:30 PM, I started getting ready for the festival. Hey, I found my ice-colored jeans... o_O! Hmm, they're tight...kinda. (Is it wrong for a guy to wear tight clothes??? I wonder...) I also decided to wear a long-sleeved, white collared shirt. (I call it collared because people mistakened shirt with T-shirt nowadays.) Anyways, I got into the car, and me and my mom went off. But the minute we left the house, my mom forgot to bring a camera! (She said the festival was REALLY PRETTY, and she asked me to call my dad on her cell phone to check if we had film left and I asked, and yeah, we did have more film left.) But the traffic got kinda rowdy, and there was no way to turn back without being late... ^^;; Well, when we got there, there was a traffic jam by the temple because SO MANY CARS WERE TRYING TO GET INTO THE TEMPLE!!! (IT WAS JAM-PACKED!!!) Well, we did get into the church because some traffic police made us park in a field by the church... @_@ We walked through a field of mud, dirt, and grass... XP (The mud was far from us, so we didn't get dirty... ^^;;) Oh, the temple was so pretty... ^^ There was a pagoda in one area, and then a large temple in another area, and there was a large stand where people sang, and the whole temple was decorated in colored lanterns... ^^ Oranges, pinks, reds, blues, yellows just lit up the whole area. There was a cement lake in the middle, and there was a wooden bridge going through it, and there were bonsai trees everywhere... It was so beautiful... There were lights everywhere, and people moving about... So busy. (GAH, I REALLY DID WISH WE BROUGHT THE CAMERA!!!) But the way we got in??? XP There was a field, and after that, we had to walk over two wooden boards to cross over a muddy puddle. XP And that's where the back of the temple was... It was the kitchen area basically. I saw a girl, and two guys. The girl was looking at me and said I was hot... o_O;; Oh yes. I kept trying to hide my cross when I was there. You see, I have a gold chain around my neck that I wear with the crucifix on it. And I kept trying to hide it. XP (What was that about?! Am I trying to deny my own religion?! Shame on me!) Well, there was a market area in the area on the right of the temple and they were selling crystals, Buddhist charms, and paintings and pictures. ^^ (They weren't really paintings... They were those Chinese silk paintings where they would paint over a silk, then sow over it to make it look 3-D like... They're really nice. ^^) BUT OH MY GOSH. My mom spent over a $100 on two paintings. (I'll call them paintings because I don't know what else to call them.) One was a flock of butterflies flying over rose flowers, and another one was two sparrows perched on a deep-red flower-blossoming tree... SO PRETTY... ^^ But they were so expensive!!! My mom haggled with the two sellspeople! (One was a monk...err...priestess, and another one was a man.) Ah, my mom did lower the price, but only by a few dollars... Oh yes! My mom thought the two pictures would be heavy, so she wanted someone to carry it, but there was no one. So the man told her to leave it there and come back for it later, but she didn't trust him. She paid him the money and STILL HASSLED OVER THE PRICE. Gah, that man drove a hard bargain. ^^;; But my mom didn't want to leave it with him because he might leave before she come. So he wrote on the box that held the paintings that it belonged to my mom. He wrote "Sold to" and then my mom's name on them even wrote "ao xanh la cay" which meant "green shirt"! (My mom and I just laughed at that. So if you read it, it would translate to "Sold to (my mom's name), the (woman with the) green shirt"... XP) So my mom and I carried those two paintings back to the van, FAR OFF IN THAT FIELD. But we got lost on the way there... @_@ Kinda. She said we weren't going the right way, even though we were, so we just took the original path. (When we past the path, there was a girl sitting down on the cement, staring at me, and she was screaming into her phone "ARE YOU SERIOUS? HE'S GAY?" o_O??? But then again, we were in a busy festival area, so yeah.) There was that girl who called me hot standing right there, and she kept looking at me. o_O So we loaded it into the van and went back to the festival. We bought food, and my mom kept TELLING ME OVER AND OVER IT WAS "chay" or "vegetarian". I KNEW THAT ALREADY!!! (You see, Buddhist monks can't eat meat.) Hmm, I wonder if Miroku from "Inuyasha" eats meat... o_O So we just bought bun bo hue (which is a type of Vietnamese noodle soup, but uses thicker noodles than phõÒ, and the broth is different), chay-styled. XP And we bought che, which is ALMOST like Vietnamese pudding. Actually, che differs between different kinds, like pudding, so they're not all made the same. The one we bought was a jello-kind. We couldn't find a place to sit, but there was a woman nice enough to let us sit on a bench. I just finished part of my bun bo hue and I threw it away. So after that, we went by the Lady Buddha statue. ^^ (That was the first thing I saw when we reached the temple. IT'S SO TALL... @_@!!!) Ah, the Lady Buddha statue. It was nice. There were a group of monks sitting on a platform by the Lady Buddha statue, and there were monks on the bridge hovering over the water. (I learned there was more than 120 monks there.) And then my mom told me to pray. Yes, even though I'm Catholic, I'm used to praying Buddhist prayers, even though I'm not sure what they mean all the time. XP (And I don't memorize them. I know some stuff, but that's it. XP) Then the ceremony started, and all the monks left the stage and the bridge... (Oh, so you know, monks can also be women. Earlier, I called one of them a "priestess". I wonder if that was the right word to use... @_@?) Oh yeah. The last monk on there was afraid of the stairs...so he gripped onto the rail and walked really slow... ^^;; You know the part in "Final Fantasy X" when Yuna walks on the water and on the water, there are coffins, and she's doing a ritual to guide the spirits into heaven? Well, that's the same kind of ritual. They're praying so that the souls find their way into heaven. And they get water lanterns shaped like lotuses, put candles in the middle of the lantern, light it up, and let it float down the water... So pretty. ^^ There was a girl on the left of me and when I passed her to pray, she said "He's cute!" to a friend right next to her... o_O??? My mom called my dad OVER AND OVER. She was afraid that my dad would get angry because she bought those Chinese pictures... @_@ Oh yeah. My dad was angry because my mom wasn't home... @_@??? He said she left my brother and sister home... XP You see, my dad's the jealous type. HE WON'T LET ANOTHER GUY WALK WITH MY MOM. @_@!!! (He always thinks she'll leave him for another guy... @_@!!!) My dad thought she was with those guys from yesterday from Sa Dec... @_@ And for information, you're probably wondering why there was over 120 monks in this temple? There aren't. Some of them are from Vietnam. You see, those monks get their airport ride paid for by a family or a group of people to a family relative in another country (ex. Canada, U.S.) and then they get another airport ride to here, etc. That's how they usually get their rides. (You know in Thailand, if you're a monk, you get to ride on an airplane for free?! I heard it on T.V., but then again, my translation might not be so good... XP) Ah, the temple was so beautiful... My mom said that it cost over trillions of dollars... XP (Yeah, it must've. A ton of things there were carved out of granite or gneiss, even the benches. XP And there was marble everywhere... @_@ And bonsai trees.) Wow, they really did try to make this temple to look authentically Asian. ^^ All the temples I've been to have been pretty, but not as pretty as this one. ^^ (Then again, there was a temple in a pagoda-style with dragons on the pagoda tips. o_O! But that was a church, not a temple. XP) So we went by another area of the temple, and there were two lions carved out from gneiss, I think... (isn't that expensive? o_O!) And my mom lights up some incense and starts praying. But I go over to the bridge and watch the water... It's so peaceful... So tranquil. ^^ (And this event is really special. I even saw some American people there. XP) Oh yeah! I saw Tina there! From my church! (You know? The girl I say in my church that almost looks like a ganguro??? I don't mean to sound mean when I say that though.) Yeah. There were people from my church there... XP I also saw Vincent, but when I touched them and said "Hi", he had an agape expression on his face. o_O??? Oh yeah! After that, my mom ate her che (she never did) and after that, I went to go buy a pie... The monk (woman) who worked there thought my mom was an American person. XP (Like, white, I mean.) She tried to speak to me and her in English. XP Like she asked in Vietnamese how much it was, but she stilled answered back "One dola." (Dola = Dollar mispronounced, yeah. XP) After that, we went into the main part of the temple and my mom wanted to tell her fortune. So we took off our shoes before we entered. She wanted me to get the sticks, but I couldn't understand what she meant. XP (I felt lost because I wasn't used to be in a Buddhist area... Well, in a long while anyways.) You see, my dad doesn't like my mom to worship Buddhism, even though she was originally Buddhist. -_-;; I used to go because my grandparents would come down, and we would go with them, but after they passed away, that's the last time I went. (Also, their funerals were also practiced in the Buddhist way, so that too.) So she kneeled, shook the sticks, and one of them popped out, and we read what it meant. (My Vietnamese wasn't that fluent, so I didn't understand. XP) Oh yes. I saw a little boy wearing monk clothes and had a partly shaved head. (Yes, little monks have their WHOLE HEADS shaved off except for half of their bangs. ^^;;) But that little boy was probably only 3-5 years old? Wow... Little kids are put into monkhood so young... I also noticed some monks that were in their 20's... Yup yup. They're pretty young too. They can't like girls and they can't marry. (But I saw one of the younger monks looking at girls on stage. o_O;; He's not like Miroku, is he??? ^^;;) One of them had a beanie hat that Hinaru always wears... XP And some even have black robes... XP (Ooh, so cool. XP) After that, my mom checked the clock and said it was 10 PM. And yeah, we went home. But oh yeah!!! The kids there...at the temple, were so rambunctious!!! They were running around, tagging each other, jumping around while people were trying to pray. ^^;; (The monks didn't seem to mind though.) Oh yeah! The temple got really littered with trash because of the festival. Those dirty people. -_-;; Oh, we passed by the kitchen as we left for the field again. I noticed in the kitchen that there were fancy chairs and tables and monks were eating in there. ^^;; (Wow, this temple is pretty fancy, eh? XP) There was also a young couple that seemed to be married and the girl was yelling "Capische?!" at the guy... ^^;; Weird. My mom said her parents never let her to go festivals when she was little. And if they did, it was hardly. You see, my grandparents were rich back in Vietnam and they didn't want their grandchildren to go out in public because they were afraid that they would get kidnapped and be ransomed for. o_O;; Well, before we got home, we refilled with gas by the gas station next to Paulisha's house and went home. Ah, that was a busy day, eh? XP I don't think you'll feel much better if I told you about Friday now, eh? I'll save that for tomorrow. XP Good night, and remember to set your clocks one hour...earlier? Or was it later? Well, bye. XP End: 12:09 PM CST © 2004-2007 MiasmaMoon. All rights reserved. Comments (3) « Home