Christmas
On Christmas day we sang Christmas songs to the entire school over the loudspeaker. We also danced the cha cha slide (which our students absolutely adore) in front of the school. In class, we had a party. See below.
Sports Day
Every year, all over Thailand, students participate in Sports Day. Classes and grades are divided into teams based on the Thai equivalent of homeroom. There are students who run, students who play volleyball, students who play soccer, and students who play ping pong. The other students learn cheers for their teams and a much smaller group of students learn dances to cheer their team on.
So for the entire month of December the last hour of the day (from 3 to 4) was spent outside, preparing for sports day. It was a ton of fun for the kids but they missed out on a lot of academic instruction.
I participated in sports day in a few ways. First, I was asked by some of my students to teach them a dance. So I spent a lot of those out of class hours teaching 4 of my 6th graders dances to Thai and American songs. It was a lot of fun and it gave me an excuse to dance.
I was also asked (after bringing in my flags for show and tell) to teach a flag routine to my 5th grade class and Kathy’s 4th grade class. That proved to be fairly difficult and time consuming but ended up being a lot of fun.
Unfortunately I was enjoying my New year’s break when sports day occurred so I wasn’t actually there. But I got some wonderful pictures of all the kids parading around school in support of their teams and of the flags and dancers. See below.
New Years
For New Years me and 2 of the girls I teach with, Helena and Kathy, and another foreign teacher in Nan, Sarah went to Koh Maak a small island about 5 hours south of Bangkok. It was absolutely beautiful. The island is still really underdeveloped so we spent a lot of time in the dark walking on the beach and using wonderfully cold bucket showers. They had fireworks at midnight and really amazing food.
We made a lot of both Thai and foreign friends (as is common in secluded places) and I officially obtained a Thai nickname, Ratree (pronouncing the second r is optional). It means “night” and it also refers to a flower that is open at night. Pictures of our trip below.
