Hooray for Valentine's Day! Though it was Friday and normally a Community Day, I went to class to do some materials preparation and give gifts! It was super fun and I took time to visit other classes I don't see normally to do Valentine's Day cards and practice saying the letter 'V'!
 Okay, for the rest of January there were a few things, but they were really more important to me than photo-worthy. The first was my site visit, where the head of my department in Peace Corps came up to visit me, and that was great! She watched Kan and I teach and talked to us about any issues we might be facing or ways we can improve, and it was very nice. She loved my house, too! That was the 27th, and on the 31st ONET testing began for our bpratom 6 and mattyom 3 students. The ONET is a standardized test for all of Thailand and student's scores help with school rankings and all that. We prepare the students months in advance for the ONET, so again, this was a big deal for us, but not really deserving of a photograph!
The only event I really did take photos at was a big area assembly, for Teacher's Day, where schools from all of PESAO 3 got together and were honored for their participation in parades, or for their teacher's efforts, or for other areas of excellence. Kan was honored for her work in teaching English, and BanAi was awarded for its participation in an anti-drug parade earlier in the year. It was a nice assembly and was great seeing teachers from all over the area! Today I joined the other PCVs in the area to meet a new official at the abbotaw in Fang and have some outdoor fun Thai-style! I'm sorry I don't have photos of this event because at the end of it I was wearing a fluffy tutu-skirt made from running a string through small plastic bags' handles, and it was great!
We played relay races mostly, which I'm coming to associate with Thai Sport Days, they're so ubiquitous! I liked the Balloon Popping Relay, where the team stands yards apart and each has a balloon. You need to blow up the balloon 'till it pops before you can run, out of breath, to the next person in your team! The Underpants Relay, where you put on a pair of huge underwear before running to the opposite end of the track to tag your teammate and give them the underpants was fun, and kind of the same slapstick humor found in the Blindfolded Banana Feed, where 2 people in blindfolds peel and are fed a banana! But I think that my favourite event might have been the Slowest Bicycle Race, where the winner is the person who can pedal a bicycle the slowest, or maybe it was the Bamboo Pole Race, where the whole team of 5-7 people straddle a bamboo pole and then have to run together to cross the finish line! Both of these were difficult for a person much taller than the Thai average (the bicycle, for example, was a Thai student's bike and felt like a clown's tricycle to me!), but we had a great time. ...We had so much fun that I'm not sure I can remember the full name of the guy we had all assembled to meet! This week we, Kan, Gung and I, went to a teaching workshop hosted by the US Embassy. Attendees were teachers from Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar--practically all of ASEAN! The workshop was intensive and interactive, and Kan and I got some great ideas to implement in our classroom. The speaker was Dr. Helena Curtain, and if you ever have a chance to take a workshop from her, do it! We had a great time and learned a lot. This week Kan was busy with an ONET prep class where we had students from 3 schools congregate to learn about the whole test-taking process, so I got to do Christmas themed activities with all my students! We had a great time making decorations, learning Christmas vocabulary, and playing games together. ...We did get a bit loud when it came to playing games, though, especially as we were only a corridor away from where they were doing their ONET prep! We all had an excellent time making crafts and playing games together...celebrating the season with laughter and noise!
Today I got to help at a Christmas-themed English Camp at a semi-nearby school. Not only did I get to work with some super excited students I've never met before, but I got to work with other PCVs, which was cool. The teacher who put the idea for a camp in motion was Kruu Gung, who is amazing, and with whom I've worked many times before. Christmas is much bigger here in Thailand than I expected, but it's all the commercial aspects of the holiday that are celebrated. Tesco will have a huge display of cookies and chocolates, lights and garlands, all the gift-giving and feasting paraphernalia you could need is on display, so at times it was difficult to be away from family because it reminded me of how shops are decorated in America! We began with some basic holiday vocabulary, tree, gift, reindeer, Santa, etc., and played games to incorporate TPR learning into the lesson to aid the student's memories. I think we also made Christmas Cards and watched movie clips (did you know you can find The Nightmare Before Christmas dubbed in Thai?!), as well as playing other learning-based, holiday themed games. The best and most exciting activity of the day, however, was an egg drop!
After seeing Banteay Srei Temple Linzee and I took our tuk-tuk to Pre Rup. This temple was dedicated in 961, or early 961, so it's a few years older than Banteay Srei. There weren't any carvings like we'd seen on the earlier temple, but Pre Rup was so much more vast! We got to climb and crawl all over these ruins without fear, and it was super fun! It was barely lunchtime by then, and Angkor has so many beautiful temples! We decided to visit one of the more famous temples next, Ta Prohm. The youngest temple we'd yet visited, Ta Prohm was dedicated in 1186 A.D. Leaving Ta Prohm I discovered that Cambodian people trying to sell you something _do_not_stop. Shaking your head and walking away doesn't deter them, they will follow you! They will follow you for a long time, and if you are foolish enough to buy something from someone, EVERYONE will follow you! Don't take money if you go! That is, if you don't intend to buy overpriced tourist stuff! Because we'd rented the tuk-tuk for the day, even though we were getting a little tired of ruins (heat, other tourists...) we decided to hit another temple. We went to the site of the ancient city Angkor Thom and saw Bayon Temple, which was (like Ta Prohm) part of the civic works plan of King Jayavarman VII. While Ta Prohm was dedicated to his family, Bayon was to be his state temple, so it's a temple-mountain and supremely impressive. After Bayon we headed back to the hotel, and rested up for the Half-Marathon!
The race the next day was oodles of fun, though after the first 10 k I fell behind the rest of the group and was, by far, the last of us to cross the finish line! It was beautiful, though, and running around the ruins was super. It was lovely, and with that scenery as well as the tunes I was listening to, I had a great time. Children would line the route and some runners had backpacks that they'd lighten by giving the kids pencils and notebooks, or other goodies. Other runners would give high fives and fist bumps, and I had a really great time just enjoying the fact that I was there, running around the ruins of Angkor Wat! Going home the next day was no trouble, more lines and the like, but once back at site there was plenty to do, so getting back into the swing of things was easy! 
Last month we had a planning meeting for this camp (when we visited Lumpini Park and all that), and now the event finally arrived! There were about 15 Peace Corps Volunteers involved, as well as Thai teachers and volunteers who were students of debate, and we had about 300+ middle and high school aged students from all over Thailand practicing their debating skills in English.
Now, this event was a little tricky for a few reasons, primarily that all the planning and stuff we did last month was for naught because our leadership changed and so did the outline and content of the camp! It was crazy! After all the changes we had loads more additional training about what debate is, how to judge, and all the ins and outs of Asian Parliamentary Style Debate. Overall, I enjoyed the experience, possibly because I have so much previous experience as a judge in other types of competition, and I've been judged so I know how to phrase suggestions and give constructive criticism. I really enjoyed the passion of the students and how their teachers would approach us afterwards and ask how their students could improve, why we ruled one way or the other, because asking questions like that shows how much the teachers care about their students and their students' success. It was a great experience, on the whole! While Western holidays like Christmas and New Year's are celebrated here in Thailand, the All-American holiday of Thanksgiving is basically ignored. Because it is a part of who we are, though, we Volunteers got together to celebrate Fakesgiving a little earlier than the actual holiday. The party was nice, some PCVs rented an apartment in Bangkok and the rest of us found lodging at hostels nearby then took the BTS Skytrain (it's BART, but newer, cleaner, fancier, and there seats reserved for handicapped people as well as seats reserved for monks) to the apartment to get food ready. I brought a quinoa salad (the one I first learned to make up at my Aunt Sue's), some Peanut Butter Fudge-Like Candy (an Alton Brown recipe) and bean soup. Both the salad and the candy were a huge hit, but the soup ended up largely going to waste; maybe because we didn't have bowls to eat it, maybe because it didn't look all that special, or maybe because it was sitting alongside things it's really hard to find in Thailand but that Americans love, like cheese. Smile, there was so much cheese there! Cheese plates, various types of macaroni and cheese, cheesy dips and spreads, other dairy-based desserts...craziness! It was really nice to see all the other Volunteers, and really, the social aspect of Thanksgiving is the more important part of the holiday. I got to talk to Volunteers I'd been close to in training but hadn't seen for months, chat with others about various challenging aspects of service and teaching, ask for advice and talk about future intentions...it was a very fun event. 
I'm off to the right of the middle, about 4 rows back. Happy Fakesgiving!
Along with Yi Peeng, Loy Krathong is one of Thailand's most famous festivals. Because this festival has such a long history in Thailand (and in Laos, and there are similar festivals in Korea, China, Japan, and Vietnam) the origins are somewhat obscure. Most say that Loy Krathong is to honor Buddha, it is even conjectured that the lanterns are floated to remember the footprint of the Buddha on the banks of the Nammathanati River in India, but there are others that focus more on the Goddess of Water and on honoring and thanking the water/rivers for the life they give and sustain. Loy (or loi, spelling optional!) means 'to float', and a krathong (kratong, choose your favourite spelling) is a specific object made out of banana leaves decorated with flowers, candles and incense sticks. | AuthorThese are the personal opinions of Spook, and do not reflect those of the Peace Corps. ArchivesCategories |
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