Today was Krathin Prarachatan (Garam Pa Ra Chi Tan? I truly have no idea of the spelling here, and what I noted was vastly different from what my co wrote for me when I asked!), a Thai holiday we just celebrated locally at the Wat (temple) next to the school. The students prepared offerings and took them to the Wat, and the rest of us just made merit and asked for blessings upon (and from? I'm still not wholly sure!) the Royal family.
Making merit is what we call the Offering; I think that's the closest we come to it in the Protestant church. Here in Thailand we give money, but also anything that might be useful for monastic life, so people give laundry detergent, cereal, soymilk, rice, prepared food, toothbrushes, a wide variety of things that keep an institution that relies upon goodwill to continue operation. Smile, can you imagine an offering plate overflowing with bottles of dish soap, packs of tissue, and Tupperware filled with spaghetti and the like? Or, can you imagine our pastors only being allowed to live on what was offered to them by us parishioners? And not being able to refuse anything that's offered? At any rate, in exchange for these offerings there is chanting prayer and blessings (similar to our forgiveness of sins?). I know that the special thing about today, as opposed to birthdays or any other regular day one might visit the Wat, is that it focuses on the Royal family.
Next year when this holiday rolls around I'll try to remember to take pictures and get further clarification!
Okay, one of the items on my 'Must Do Before Leaving Thailand' list was to ride an elephant, but pursuing this activity is trickier than you might believe. I didn't want to ride an abused elephant, and the vast majority of elephants that the public is allowed to be near has major abuse in its past, so I was looking at elephant rescue farms. The only problem with that is that many rescue farms don't allow riding, which makes sense, but didn't do anything to get me nearer my goal. However, semi-near my site there's a (magical!) place called Patara Elephant Farm, and my friend Chai and I went and had one of the coolest days EVER visiting and riding the elephants there!
Okay, I literally have HUNDREDS of photos of this day, it was so amazing! Not only are these just a fraction of the photos I took, but Chai's camera was full of photos and at the end of the day the guides gave us a CD of photos they took!
Patara is a really cool elephant farm, and they really do focus on the education of people about elephants, which we both appreciated. All of their rescued elephants have survived and thrived in their new home, they employ local tribespeople, and what they're doing to aid the dwindling elephant population is laudable.
For the past few days I've been busy planning a debate camp with another volunteer and a number of other teachers from all over Thailand. I've met some teachers who work with other Volunteers in other areas, and the planning has been going well, smile. The camp will be next month, hosted by the OBEC, and the attendees will be a couple hundred students from all over Thailand, I think from 5th grade and up.
Debate can be difficult to plan, because coming up with the prompts is a bit of a challenge. We wanted topics that would interest the students and were easily arguable, and it was that part that gave us all some trouble. Here they have a Government and Opposing side, not just pro and con like I remember from High School, and the Government generally takes the pro side of the debate which can lead to the opposition having very few valid arguments. We also didn't want to recycle topics from previous years or debate inflammatory or disrespectful ideas, so we had our work cut out for us! Fortunately, we had a great group of teachers, and working together we were able to come up with the required number of prompts for the camp, which should be oodles of fun!
Yi Peeng (yi meaning '2nd' and peeng meaning 'month' in the Lanna language) (also spelled Yee Peng, Yi Peng...spelling here is totally inconsistent so you generally pick something that makes sense to your ear), is part of the Festival of Lights to honor Buddha and celebrate life. This year I got to attend a large gathering at Mae Jo College near Chiang Mai with some other volunteers, and we had the best time ever!
It was such a wonderful festival, I'd love to go again next year! If I do go again, I'll wear proper white (in respect) so I can sit up front and see the monks, smile!
After everyone released their lanterns it became a bit of a zoo, and I separated from the group. I gotta tell you, I met hoards of people who made me embarrassed to be American, their behaviour was so obnoxious. When you're a guest in a country, at a religious festival, I'm sure you can have a good time without behaving atrociously! The crowd after the festival reminded me of what it's like when you're leaving a game at the Oakland Coliseum, really, but worth it!
Today I and a few other friends tried the most expensive coffee in the world, coffee that has been through the intestinal tract of an elephant! I know everyone thinks that the 'most expensive coffee' is kopi luwak, the beans that have been through a civet, but Black Ivory (elephant poo) coffee is even more rare!
We went to the Four Seasons for the coffee (so expensive it's offered there and...very few other places!) and had a nice time visiting.
I actually wrote a little review for Andy's blog about how tasty the coffee was, using my most syllabic coffee-prose. "Uniquely aromatic with a fruity bouquet, Black Ivory has a multi-layered taste that is simultaneously floral and robust. Its particular processing removes the tannic flavonoids, resulting in a light, non-citric brew without a trace of bitterness, well balanced between the sweet and earthy realms, with notes of chocolate and the forest; a rich and complex flavor that words cannot do justice."
Quite an experience!
This past week I had a bit of a vacation, there's a break in classes which was nice. Naturally, I wanted to plan and prepare things but nothing much actually got done, smile! I ended up re-reading all the Harry Potter books and just staying at home, which was calm and fun.
***I remember (because I'm playing catch-up now, trying to update my blog and fill in the 6 month gap between posts) that it was around now that my computer started really, really acting up and wouldn't connect to the internet. At the English Camp last week a guy who was knowledgeable about computers tried to help me with my computer, but it didn't really help. This vacation was nice, but I do feel that I could have gotten more done if my wireless card hadn't been faulty!***
For the past 3 days I and a few other PCVs were resources for an English Teacher Camp held at a nearby resort for teachers in the area. We had a great time working with all the teachers and having fun learning together!
Sigh, thinking about this camp and how great it was (Kruu Gung is a fabulous organizer!) I wish I had taken more photos! The awards at the end were so much fun to watch, and I wish I'd gotten a picture of some of our games. We played the game where you sit on a balloon to pop it, read and answer the question inside, then run to the back of the line game, and we played the game where a balloon is rubber-banded to your foot and you try to pop everyone else's balloon while keeping yours intact. Hooray for balloon games! ...Oh, and teaching English as well! Smile!
Today I had the pleasure of being a judge at an English competition in a nearby school for students from all over the district. It was a fun experience, and I got to meet a number of teachers I hadn't previously known. Because there are two different systems of government here, and each has an associated school system, while I'm getting to know many teachers in the area, they're generally all from one system, so there are still plenty of English teachers in the area I've never met!
The students (of which there were 8) were all in primary school and were tested in reading comprehension, writing, listening and drawing a picture according to the directions given (we said things like, there is a girl with brown hair in the middle of the picture, a yellow dog on her right, a red flower with a bee on it on her left...), and then there was a short interview. I got to help with all the speaking things; giving the directions for the drawing, the listening comprehension parts, and I got to help with the oral interview too, so it was pretty fun. Also, because I'd recently gotten a care package from home and there were so few students I was able to give all participants prizes! That made the day a little more fun, to my mind, and after the competition when I heard that English had 8 student participants and Thai competition had 30+ competitors I was even happier I'd been able to give more encouragement, smile.
There were skits and prepared speeches, Thai debates and other events that day as well, and overall it was a lovely student showcase for the area.
This past week I had Dengue (don't worry, this post has no pictures). It was possibly, objectively, the worst I've ever felt in my life (but kind of inevitable, considering that I'm a human buffet for mosquitoes). I was sick for a week and a bit with the headache, fever, rash, and all the joys of massive GI distress, and ended up in the hospital yesterday. However, because there's no way I could have made the ride to the big hospital in the City without incident, by the time I got there all my symptoms had resolved themselves, and I just had electrolyte imbalance and some dehydration (from the violent GI distress).
This is my second serious illness since I got here (Bell's Palsy in April/May, remember?), and I do feel like the medical unit takes good care of us volunteers, and people at site have concern for us and take care of us too. Aside from major illnesses like this one there are minor environmental things that we can also get help with. We have 24-hour medical help available to us by phone, did you know? Anyways, I really appreciate the care and attention, the support we get from our site as well as the staff in Bangkok, to keep us healthy!
Thursday I had the opportunity to do some fun community stuff with my school, as all of the students and most of the teachers went to the Wat associated with our school to honor the dead. Sala Ga-pat isn't a set date, like Valentine's Day, but follows the Thai horoscope, like Thanksgiving for us. It's a day to give buckets of food, personal items, money, anything a monk might find useful, with a tree on top, to the monks of your local Wat to honor the spirits of dead people. It was great to go with my teacher friends and do something in the community, and we had a great time!
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