Children's Day

Children’s Day

In Thailand, Children’s Day is a national event that falls on the second Saturday in January every year.  The Friday before Children’s Day has been designated Students’ Day at our school, with games, entertainment, and prize drawings. This year, several elementary classes (pratom) gave dance performances. Students in the upper grades (mattayom) had booths or stalls with games where you could test your skills or try your luck to win prizes.

Arriving at school on Students’ Day, I was pleasantly surprised by how colorful it all was, in contrast to regular school days.  Students who would be performing later in the morning were wearing their costumes and makeup. The other students were wearing ordinary clothes instead of their uniforms, that is, clothes of many colors rather than all the same. Here are the students gathered for the daily flagpole ritual and speech from the school principal:

To emphasize that the students are the most important people on Students’ Day, most teachers (except me) wore student uniforms; women in the white blouses and blue skirts that the girls wear on Mondays, and male teachers in white shirts and brown shorts.

Dance performances by student groups were scheduled throughout the morning, beginning with the youngest students and continuing through Grade 6. I made way too many videos of students dancing but am posting only two, both by students in some of my classes – not that I had any role in their practice sessions or rehearsals.  On the contrary, I was surprised to learn how many students in my Levels 4 and 5 were performing in dance groups. The first video below is a short excerpt from the performance by Level 4.

The next video is from the performance by students from Level 5, who had much flashier costumes than Level 4, but also the ongoing danger of wardrobe malfunctions. The theme of cross-dressing, noted in a couple of earlier posts, shows up here as well. Can you tell which three dancers are boys?

In between performances I browsed game booths, which included musical chairs (shades of my one-room country school!), opportunities to win prizes by throwing balls to knock down bottles or dolls, and one in which contestants blow powdered sugar off a small object on a plate and then pick it up with their teeth.

The game in the photo below is familiar, though I can't remember what it's called, so I named it Balloon Stomp.

Prize drawings throughout the morning kept students milling around the stage hoping to win snacks or a toy.  After the dance performances were finished, there were opportunities to win prizes by playing Balloon Stomp or Musical Chairs.

The day ended with a prize drawing for a new bicycle donated by the school principal – the big event that everyone had been waiting for. The first students whose names were called must have already gone home, since they did not come forward.  Watch what happened next:

The girl whose name was read out after the toss is one of those students everyone wants more of -- always eager to participate in class, high achieving, a frequent winner for her summaries of the stories read during morning flagpole time (described in an earlier post, “Flagpole Tales”), and just a really great kid to have around.  You’ll recognize her from the Level 4 dance performance, above.

It was fun to see how much the students enjoyed Students’ Day, and especially to see them working together in their performances. Whatever you may think of their costumes and the dance moves, it seems clear to me that the students were really just having a great time, and were proud to show off how well they had learned their routines. It makes me want to make language teaching more like the arts, where students become so engaged in the creative process that they forget they’re learning something. Easier said than done, huh.

The following day, January 11^th, was Children’s Day in Thailand. Government offices in larger towns and cities are open to children and their families on that day, with opportunities for children to be the Thai equivalent of Mayor for a Day, for example.  This year the government announced, with apologies, that Children’s Day activities in Bangkok would be curtailed “because of security concerns” related to ongoing political protests and demonstrations.  Both the Caretaker Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, and the leader of the anti-government protest demonstrations, Suthep Thaugsuban, published slogans that encapsulate their advice to children.

Ms Yingluck’s 2014 slogan for children is: Be grateful. Know your duty. Be good. Have discipline. Make Thailand strong.  Mr. Suthep’s is: Think smart, love the country, love the King, be honest, and stay Thai. – Words that the two leaders might want to take to heart themselves.

If you wish, you can click on the link below to see a Bangkok Post article for students, in “Easy English” and with many pictures, about Children’s Day 2014.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/easier-stuff/330581/new-generation-takes-over-for-a-day

New Year's Tourists

New Year’s Tourists

Look for this post to be long on pictures and short on content.  My New Year’s trip was to Chiang Mai and Pai in northern Thailand. Tours and treks that my PCV pal Yee and I wanted to take were at capacity before we even asked – but not before we’d bought bus tickets. Chiang Mai is a major city with a long history, a well-regarded university, numerous temples, a famous night market, and several excellent museums – which were closed for the New Year’s holidays.  Oh well.

So we had a lazy vacation, sightseeing, strolling, shopping and taking pictures.  Here’s a hotel we stayed at in Chiang Mai and the demon that guards it – note the similarity to the Grand Palace demons:

In Chiang Mai, we spent a couple evenings taking in the free entertainment at an open-air New Year’s festival and market with vendors hawking every kind of craft and souvenir and food stalls for every taste. Two emcees kept up an informative chatter (one speaking Thai, one speaking English) about the performances, with frequent reminders of the festival’s “no alcohol, no smoking” policy – unusual in Thailand, as far as I can judge. Among the entertainers were traditional Thai dancers, musicians and singers of various persuasions, and several groups of young male dancers in their teens, of the style I believe is called K-Pop. In between performances there were contests, raffles and prizes (festival T-shirts) for audience members. 

At the market we found many Hmong vendors with beautiful handmade clothing, pillows, quilts, table runners . . . you name it.  You are expected to offer less than the vendor asks – and if they accept your offer, you just bought something. I’m not good at bargaining, especially over goods that clearly took days or possibly weeks to finish.  But at least I know enough not to answer the question “How much you want to pay?” – if the vendor should happen to accept, see above. Yee speaks the Hmong language fluently (her family emigrated to the US when she was very small). I’m not sure what her conversation with the woman selling bedspreads was about, but the price went down 1500 baht (about $50) – so I bought one in my favorite colors. The picture shows about half of it – it’s harder than I thought to photograph a bedspread.  

 Want a receipt for what you bought?  Dream on.

From Chiang Mai, we went farther north to Pai, a four-hour mini-bus ride through the mountains. Pai is a scenic village with (of course) a street market, street entertainment in the evenings, many restaurants, bars and coffee houses, and various attractions that sound interesting but are mostly photo ops. For example, the strawberry farm has a modest-sized strawberry field, as you can see in the photo below:

 However, mainly it sells strawberry products – strawberry jam, dried strawberries, candied strawberries, strawberry wine, mugs with strawberries on them, etc.  The wine was unmemorable.  Here are a couple of the photos we took.

Yee in archway

Me as Giant Mutant Strawberry

The coffee plantation has a huge house and beautiful grounds, but the coffee beans are grown elsewhere in the area. Coffee and strawberry cake at the café were excellent. Photo ops:

Yee and Weird Coffee Man

Me in Flower Field

A small canyon offered the opportunity to take short walks, photograph the surrounding mountains, and of course have our pictures taken:

Framed

By the time we got to the Chinese village, we’d had enough photo ops and passed up invitations to be photographed with several people wearing stunningly beautiful traditional Chinese garments.  I couldn’t resist the hand-operated ferris wheel though. 

Back in the village, the street market began setting up in the late afternoon. There were goods from several countries besides Thailand as well as crafts and fabrics from a range of hill tribes besides Hmong. There was no shortage of people wanting to pose for pictures, like these children:

 Of course, you’re expected to give them a little money after the picture is taken.  Comparing their costumes with pictures I found on the internet, my best guess is that the children are of the Lisu tribe. I had hoped to learn more at the Hill Tribes Museum in Chiang Mai, but it was closed for New Year’s.

Back in Chiang Mai on December 30 before returning to our sites, we made a last visit to the New Year’s festival.  Since New Year’s Eve was now almost upon us, quite a few vendors were selling koom fai (sky lanterns, also called Yi Peng), which work like miniature hot-air balloons. They were traditionally launched during the full moon of the twelfth lunar calendar month (usually in November in the Western calendar, and coinciding with the Loy Krathong festival). Later they became associated with New Year’s celebrations as well.  Here is a video of a couple sending up a lantern:

The lanterns floating through the sky are beautiful to watch. I read that there are usually a few reports of UFO sightings during events involving sky lanterns – not surprising. Ideally, the lanterns burn up their fuel and fall harmlessly to the ground (contributing to the litter problem but that’s another story). However, sometimes the lanterns don’t function correctly, fall while still burning, and start fires. Nothing is perfect.

As we were leaving, a passenger on our mini-bus told us about a Thai movie filmed there, Pai in Love (2009). Apparently the movie’s success contributed to Pai’s increased popularity as a vacation spot – people want to see where it was made.  Here’s a link to the movie trailer (with English subtitles). If you watch it, see if you notice any similarities between some of the landscape shots and my photographs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNEh9631xEU

Thai Days of Christmas

Thai Days of Christmas

I had expected this to be a short post – Thailand is a Buddhist country, Christmas isn’t a public holiday –how much could there be to write about? Read on.

December 24 was a teaching day.  I wore the fuzzy reindeer antlers that came along with the Christmas candy and cookies sent by my daughter, Airen, and taught my five classes a little about Christmas Eve, the hanging of Christmas stockings, and family dinners on Christmas Day. Each student got a peppermint candy cane. The rest of the candy was for the Christmas program on the 26^th.

 December 25 was Scout Day.  I had been drafted to help my co-teacher with his “station” – there were 5 or 6 stations to be completed during the day, with activities related to nature and the outdoors, as you would expect. Our station, however, was billed as “ASEAN Languages” and consisted of trying to teach 12 groups of Scouts in turn how to say hello in 10 different countries. Cynic that I am, I suspected that this station was created to give English teachers something to do on Scout Day.

But I’m getting ahead of the story.  Before setting out for stations, Scouts and teachers lined up, milled around, and shivered (we were in the throes of a cold snap, with temperatures in the 60s – very unusual here) while waiting for opening ceremonies. Only the 8^th grade Scouts were present; the others were at Scout camps, where they spent the night. Here is one of my colleagues in his Scout uniform.

 After flag-raising, the first stop was this tunnel made of branches.

 Each Scout had to crawl through the tunnel – presumably meant to simulate crawling through underbrush to escape danger in the forest? As you can see, the tunnel is low enough that students had to crawl through on their bellies. While they were in the tunnel, older students and a couple of teachers shook the branches, poured water over the tunnel, beat on it with sticks and poked sticks through. Needless to say, those who went through early on emerged much less wet and dirty than those who went later.  Watching the girls who were last in line go into the tunnel one by one, I thought about their mothers, who would have to try to get those white socks clean again.

After the tunnel activity, my colleague and I set out for our station a quarter-mile or so outside the village.  He told me that all pratom (elementary) students in grades 4, 5 and 6 and mattayom students in grades 7, 8, and 9 must participate in Scouts and aren’t allowed to continue in mattayom (=high school) unless they achieve all their Scout learning goals at the end of 9^th grade. Doing a little research later, I learned that while Scouting is required in Thai schools, students at some schools can choose other options, such as the Red Cross. However, in our village, other options aren’t available.  I also learned that Scouting was founded in Thailand in 1911 by King Rama VI, that Thailand was a charter member of the World Organization of the Scout Movement in 1922 and the third country in the world to take up Scouting. Who knew?

We were finished at our station by mid-afternoon, when the last groups of Scouts straggled out of the woods or across the field, many of them caked with mud.  They tried gamely to learn the 10 greetings, which they no doubt forgot again before the day was over – just as I did.  On the way back to the village, my colleague talked about how much he had enjoyed Scouts as a boy, and expressed pleasure in seeing our students in good spirits at the end of their day.

So that was Christmas Day.  December 26 was a teaching day that began with a Christmas program outdoors, on the court where we gather each day for flagpole. I had been asked to talk about Christmas and prepare quiz questions, with prizes (candy and cookies from my stash) to the teams who gave correct answers. We set up a table with a small artificial Christmas tree surrounded by bowls and boxes of candy and cookies. The chubby student whom my colleague had persuaded to wear a Santa Claus suit was a real trooper, steadfastly guarding the candy and patiently standing the Christmas tree up again each time it tipped over, approximately every two minutes.

The program wobbled to a start about 20 minutes late – which is almost on time by local standards. Using large flash cards of Christmas scenes, I was trying to teach the students to say “Christmas tree,” “Christmas stocking,” “Merry Christmas” and so on, when the microphone quit working.  Things quickly unraveled after that.  A teacher took the microphone to try to fix it, but returned a half-hour later with the message “No microphone.” Meanwhile, students couldn’t hear what we were saying, so they chatted among themselves and started edging toward the candy. To distract them, one colleague launched an impromptu game of Simon Says, then for reasons known only to him, taught a small group of students to count to ten in Japanese.

Eventually someone brought a different microphone that sort of worked, so I tried to finish telling about Christmas and organize teams for quiz questions (“How many reindeer does Santa have?” “When does Santa bring presents for children?”), but by this time the students, who had been waiting too long for their candy, were out of patience – and who can blame them.  After giving out a few bags of cookies to teams that did manage to answer a quiz question, we resorted to distributing treats at random and hoping that everybody got some. Thankfully, quite a lot of students were still not back from Scout camp or the chaos would have been greater.  –- In the confusion, I couldn’t take pictures, so I leave this event to your imagination.

Note to Self: Remember, technology can and will fail.  Next year, have a back-up plan.

At some point on 12/26, Airen and I met virtually to open presents together.

The first class day in the new school year brought one more Christmas-like event. New Year's gift exchanges are a long-standing Thai tradition, one that I knew nothing about before coming here.  At our school, students exchange gifts in their homerooms.  Each student brings a present (there is a price limit to keep it more affordable), resulting in a stack like this:

My co-teacher set the exchange in motion by drawing the name of a student to hand over the first gift. As you can see, she was instructed to give the first one to me.

 

 The box contained little packages of snacks, which I tossed to the children.  

 

Then the girl who had handed me the present drew a number, and the student with that number gave her the gift he had brought.  As each student handed over their present, they had to say "Happy New Year" – which was harder than you might think for a few of them. The process was repeated until all the gifts had been given.

 

 As you can see, we’re all wearing jackets or sweatshirts -- the cold snap was still on.  The buildings aren't heated (normally there would be no need for heat, or at least not more than a couple of days a year) – but this cold snap lasted for a full three weeks, much to the dismay of the Thais, accustomed as they are to being too hot – but not to being cold. At our school, New Year’s gifts are exchanged not only by students but also among the teachers, at a special meeting called by the principal. I’ll spare you my pictures of that event.

So there you have my Thai Days of Christmas. In Bangkok and other larger cities with many foreign residents, Christmas is much in evidence during December. Shopping mall checkout employees wear Santa Claus hats. Media advertising features Christmas trees, holly, and gift recommendations. Piped music plays Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. But local priorities dominate upcountry, as northern and northeastern Thailand are called.

"We Keep Our Traditions Alive"

“We Keep Our Traditions Alive.”

Loy Krathong and other Thai Traditions on Parade

Loy Krathong is a Thai water festival celebrated on the full moon of the twelfth lunar month.  The word loy means to float, and the krathong is the decorated object, often shaped like a lotus, which is floated on the river. Homemade krathong are constructed of a piece of banana tree stalk, banana leaves, flowers, a candle, and an incense stick.  Here is a picture of some larger ones from our weekly Peace Corps newsletter:

 The purpose of floating krathong is to pay respect to the Lord Buddha and to the goddess of water, or, in the words of a fellow-teacher:  “We thank the river for the water we have used and we apologize to the river if we have offended her.” You can also put all your negative thoughts into the krathong and let them float away. Parades, beauty contests and other competitions are part of the festival as well.

Loy Krathong has many opportunities for students to participate, especially dancers and marching bands. When my co-teacher told me that quite a few of our students would miss two days of class (one to rehearse and one for the parade), I grumbled about so much lost teaching time, having already missed classes during Sport Week in early November. He replied simply:  “We keep our traditions alive.”  – I guess you can’t argue with that.

I watched two Loy Krathong parades, one in a nearby village and one in the town that is the center for our amphur (=district within a province) and want to share a few images and impressions from each. 

The parade in the nearby village was on a Sunday afternoon, November 17th. I had been told it would start around 2pm, but actually, that was when the participants started assembling to find their spot in line. The parade started much later. Here are pictures of two displays I liked.

1. The photos show you two ends of the parade float spectrum. The one on the left looks like a gigantic krathong and, in my opinion, deserves a prize for artistry and symmetry. I’m not sure, but the little figures at the top might be the King and Queen. Every parade I’ve seen here includes multiple images of Their Majesties.  I thought the display on the right was a wonderful collage of fertility/fruitfulness images. Having it pulled by an ordinary tractor, the kind you see every day going from village to field and back again, honors the farmers who thank the water spirits for their harvests.

 While waiting for everything to get organized, people passed the time drinking beer and dancing.  Here is a brief video of dancers with puppets of a type I hadn’t seen before:

As you can see, the puppet-master/dancer carries the puppet apparatus on his shoulder, and poles are attached to his legs to make the puppets behind dance when he dances. Despite the heat (I sweltered in the shade of a tree), the dancing went on for the better part of an hour – and who knows how much longer after I left.  In the video, you also see a man with a balloon under his shirt to simulate pregnancy – one of many cross-dressers waiting for or taking part in the parade.  Here are some others:

 I asked several colleagues what the significance of the cross-dressing is. The only answer I got was: “They think it’s funny.” That might be the right answer for the man with the balloon belly or the guys in the photo above left, but the ones on the float in the photo on the right seem to be all about glamour. I wondered if they were part of a beauty contest, but never managed to find out, since I had to leave before the end in order to bike safely back to my village before dark.

The second parade, in our amphur town, was the following Tuesday.  It was very long, lasting more than two hours, and again, I couldn’t stay to see who won prizes. Here are some dancers from our school, getting ready.