Today is Sunday, August 23, and we are seven temples richer. I'm going to go to an internet cafe tonight to load pictures on, because they are too amazing to any longer go without.

I don't know which ones are my favorite, because they are woven together like the pieces of seafoam blue and navy blue silk on the bedspread I bought in Siyahtha. We saw the tree where the Buddha became enlightened today, and were given a leaf from it to remember. Guys from India wanted us to pose in pictures with them, and we took our shoes off seven times for seven--no eight temples: The Thai Buddhist Temple, The Chinese Buddhist Temple, The Main Buddhist Temple, the Japanese Buddhist Temple and the Nepalese Buddhist Temple. Around our necks are sandlewood beads with feng shui tassles, and on our fingers rings bear red stones.

We took our pictures with cows, watched monkeys snatch a baby's bottle at one temple, and were warned to get out of the alley for at least one bull. The baby cried, while the monkey sat just overhead in a tree with thousand-year-old roots, smiling as he sucked on the bottle of rich, warm milk.

We saw the head of Buddha 20 feet tall, glistening with gold flecks where worshippers dabbed their forheads, and then touched his face. We got up at 4 a.m. to go to worship service in a local temple, then I sat on the ghat, while children carrying baskets of brown leaf-shell bowls bearing marigolds and red rose leaves. Like last night, they came to me to draw pictures of their families and write pages of time tables in my little pocket journal. One astrologist talked to me about population control in India, as wee ones about 10 years old begged me to "give us math problems and we will find solutions!" So I offered problems about the number of legs if you had eight goats, and how many baskets would they have left if they sold four of the eight in their basket....Last night they began answering me in unison, cute little British-Indian accents punctuating the sunset as elders bathed and washed clothes behind them down the steps of the ghats.