What is a Buddhist Trainee?

I received a question about this through my blog site and thought it would be good to share as a main posting. I'm currently living in The Buddhist House, which is the home temple of Amida-Shu, a Pureland Buddhist community. I'm a full time trainee, a resident of the community studying Buddhism and learning the religious life, exploring possible ordination paths. In the Amida-Shu, there are two different ordination tracks, the Ministry track and the Amitarya path. These paths are outlined in the following link;

http://www.amidatrust.com/ordinationpaths.html

Life as a trainee is an opportunity to live the religious life and to see where this leads! It's a bit of a journey into the unknown! As a trainee, one takes guidance from the senior members of the community and duties change frequently. There's lots to be done, such as cooking, housework, gardening, house maintenance and so on. Looking after guests is also part of a trainee's job and being bell master (responsible for ringing the bells in the ceremonial hall during services and ensuring the room is tended to daily). In relation to the question, do you have to live as a trainee to be a Buddhist?, the answer would be no. There are lots of people who live outside of communities/temples and are practicing Buddhists. There are lots of different tracks in Buddhism which is great since people are so diverse :)

Here's a link to the Amida-Shu website for anyone who wants to check it out; http://www.amidatrust.com/