Today is the anniversary of the death of my great-grandfather and so the whole extended family have come to pay respects to him at a temple dedicated to him. It is unlikely that my grandmother will be able to turn up on the day of ordination itself, so she got the chance to cut a little of my hair today instead. The temple also happens to be next to the monastery where I will be ordaining so we had a chat with the abbot to see if I’m missing anything. I needed to get specific health checks with certificates before ordination so I handed them in today too.

We found that we were still missing an item of clothing so my parents will help get them tomorrow. Then it came time for them to leave and it felt weird. It’s almost the same feeling as when my parents left me at boarding school for the first time all those years ago. The environment was completely new to me and I was unsure as how to properly communicate with others in the capacity that I was in.

Then I spent the rest of the afternoon learning Ukasa but periodically falling asleep in the afternoon. In the evening I decided to try to adapt to monk life a little by not eating at all, which turned out to be fine. This was followed by the evening chanting session and this is where I still need to learn the chants. I’m not sure if I will be able to learn this any time soon and in fact I’m not really looking forward to it.

The night was the toughest as I have yet to get over jet lag so it was almost impossible to get any sleep. The new environment was nowhere near as comfortable as home. The mattress is hard and not like anything that I’m used to. The pillow was new but a little too low so I needed to put some trousers underneath. I was not comfortable using too much of the monastery’s resources so I didn’t turn on the air conditioning very high so it was rather warm. I was fortunate enough to be put in the only room with one as well. Still I had to use some sort of blanket as there were so many mosquitoes. The room faced the street and the street lamps were difficult to ignore. The lack of curtains didn’t help either. I didn’t have an eye mask so I decided to fold up some underwear and use that instead. The stray dogs were barking and howling all night, but luckily I had some earplugs.