E is for é méi 峨嵋

Emei Mountain, one of the most sacred of China's Buddhist mountains. It has drawn pilgrims and visitors for over 2,000 years. The first Buddhist temple in China was built in the 1st century A.D. in the beautiful surroundings of the summit of Emei Mountain. But will these 5-8 years olds understand what Buddism is and what Buddists believe?

Luckily some of them actually visited temple before when they travelled to China and shared what they saw in temples. Jackson said he saw exactly the same Buddha in Taiwan with the one at the Golden Summit of Emei. I compare temple with church, different Gods in Buddhism with God we worship in church, meditation with prayers to God. They got the idea that some people in China say prayers to Buddha and worship more than one God.

I played part of this video for them. They were very curious about why monks need to be bald and whether the Golden Buddha is real gold. There is so much information about Emei, so I introduced mainly 3 parts: temples, Golden Summit and monkeys. We looked at some photoes here. They drew temple, monkeys and Buddha in their sheet. Jenna even drew a panda inside the temple. Allie drew a golden temple with a Buddha sitting on top of it. Abby drew a monkey asking for food and Ally drew the golden Buddha statue.

I love this video of Golden Summit.

But their favorite part is monkeys on Emei. These wild monkeys are not afraid of people at all! Watch this video. It's hilarious! I need to post it here. This monk got famous in China now. He was in an interview at Emei when he was distracted by wild monkeys. If you can understand Chinese, it's even funnier!

This week we have two birthday kids! They get a goodie bag from Pangpang! We learned how to sing Happy Birthday song in Chinese. We decorated Pangpang cupcakes.

Spencer did a cute one!