Today's feast will stock the monastery fridge for the next three months. The monks can leave during the day to bless a house or offer prayer to a bed-ridden temple member, but before the sun goes down, they have to return to the temple grounds. For these three months they'll pay homage to Buddha and the time he spent meditating his way to the awakening. Today and almost every other day in Thailand, monks wander the streets, starting at dawn. They walk around the city carrying bowls for food.
People know that the food they give is all the monks have to eat for their single daily meal.
The monasteries in Thailand are often in the middle of town, and people know the monks will be coming around in the morning. In Florida, Buddhists are scattered, so they gather at the temple each day to feed the monks. A line has formed in front of the temple entrance, and a Thai-American girl in her early teens waits for the monks to walk by with their offering bowls. She's waiting to add her bowl full of spiced incense, flowers and rice dessert cakes to the bounty. She is a first generation American.