My name is Acharn Cathy (Acharn is the Thai word for professor). I am the instructor for this Thailand learning abroad course. The students have been meeting as a class since mid-March, learning about Southeast Asian diasporic communities that are now part of the Minnesota population mosaic.
We spent a morning in early April at Wat Promwachirayan in St. Louis Park to prepare for students immersion in multicultural northern Thailand, where we will spend two weeks, beginning May 14.

Students learned how to make Pad Thai from Wanpen Gresser.

We also learned about Buddhism and walking and sitting meditation from the monks in residence.

Thai monks explaining tenets of Buddhism.

See a brief video of the group practicing walking meditation: https://youtu.be/Wg0tp8Wf0JM

We completed our time at Wat Promwachirayan with a wonderful Thai music lesson from teacher Packy, a fine arts graduate of Chiang Mai University in Thailand, who taught students how to play several traditional Thai instruments. Through a very innovative rote process, she had them playing a song together at the end of the session!

Here is a short video of what the “Thai xylophone” and in the background, the “Thai Saw” sound like: https://youtube.com/shorts/8oizWVI-Xp0?feature=share