naughty neighbor boys

They really are. Naughty neighbor boys. Our neighbors! They are the kids that were part of the packs that came over to play around our house when we used to live in the village. I posted this picture because it is funny, seeing them here as novice monks and knowing that they look like something that belongs in National Geographic. An "ooooo!" picture. But they are just kids, normal kids like any other kid here in Southeast Asia, on any other day you would find them teasing their sisters, making their moms scream at them, acting like "tough boys" with their friends, riding their bikes around, doing all the things that boys do all over the world. Right now, though, they are trying to be spiritual, for the sake of their dead relative for whom they have become novice monks for the day. For their mothers, who are probably feeling really proud of them and hoping they won't do something silly to embarrass the family. Hoping, too, that the merit they make this day for her will really make a difference when she is the one on the funeral pyre someday.