Nuns and Friends

Venerable Yifa (pronounce her name like "e"-fa,) has been guiding the Buddhism in China Woodenfish Program for the past four years. Each year she chooses a different province in China to explore, this year of course being the general Shanghai area. We ventured quite a distance from Shanghai (about 5-6 hours by bus,) to visit loads and loads of sites. Yifa is fantastic, I really liked her. She is a Taiwanese nun from Fo Guang Shan Temple. She has spent quite a bit of time in the US, so we had a hard time surprising her. She's kind, articulate, has a sense of humor, and born leader. Below is Yifa and the Abbot during a Q&A. The photo might have been when I asked a ridiculous questions.

I showed Yifa the photo below of my brother Oliver dressed as a nun with the Ghost Busters. Yifa gazed at the photo for a few moments, probably trying to figure out what was happening,  then laughed out loud and said: "Good, the Catholics need more nuns." I beginning to think the weird things the Chinese and Taiwanese eat don't really match up to the strange things we do in the States. I suppose this was some event in Portland of running around like a nun that Oliver either organized or was a major role. I'm not really sure.

My two buddies for the week were Josh (on the left,) and Zack (on the right, plus Buddha in the middle (in the clouds,)) Josh is from the Midwest and had an awesome sense of humor. He was also very tolerant of several difficulties on the trip. Zack is from Seattle, studies at Fo Guang Shan Temple, and is fluent in Mandarin -which I totally took advantage of. Also, he studies happiness, which I've only joked about studying myself, but now the path has come into my vision (however, still horrendously blurred.) There were other fun folks who I shall mention later on.