Stickers and Stamps: Thai Day cultural experience

Today was Thai Day. Every year the school has a special cultural day. It rotates with International Day, so next year we will have international day. It is a celebration of culture, music, dance, games, crafts, food, and more. This year Thai Day focused on the coming together of the ASEAN community, southeast Asian countries.

Brief schedule of the day:
Normal first period... yea right! We did Spelling Tests and brief literature circles answering questions
Second period get ready for ceremony - changing and make up
9:30 head to ceremony
9:45 ceremony
11:15 (An hour and a half LATER!!) ceremony ends. Back to class to change
11:30 Lunch
1:00 Games/activities begin
2:30 LEAVE

Ok I am going to be very honest... I was very nervous for this day. The whole school was involved plus parents plus community. New things happening when I am supposed to be in charge scare me! The day did not go as I thought it would. I was frustrated most of the day. Looking back on it though I realized my outlook affected my kids almost as much as it affected me. I now know that I need to be energetic and try to enjoy things no matter what so that my students can try to do the same thing. Lesson learned for sure! My kids will feed off of my attitude. When I am frustrated they see that and either get frustrated or out of control. I could have made the day better by just changing my attitude!

Anyway, we separated guys and girls for changing. The guys had pants and shirts - easy peasy!! The girls were a whole other story. Skirts that needed pinned, tops needed pinned, scarf things worn like a sleeve, hair, makeup the works!

I jumped right in pinning things saying over and over "I have no idea what I am doing!" At one point I was not doing anything and asked a Thai mom what I could do. She suggested makeup. I was nervous. So I carefully put some simple eye shadow on a girl and some lip color stuff. The girl thought it was fine. Later I noticed it was not fine because the mom took over and put more, LOTs more makeup on. Make up was on almost, if not all, of the girls in K-6th grades.... crazy-ness! OH and I had one of the Thai moms put flowers in my hair. She thought it was so fun!

Then we headed to the ceremony. Here is a picture of my class performing. Each performance was in honor of something and all quite meaningful for the Thai folk. For me, just seeing the costumes and the styles of dance were so fun! The ceremony was quite long and warm but we made it.

4th Grade

4th Grade boys

4th Grade again - I couldn't resist!

These were the high school Thai Dance group.

High School Dancers

Then there was a fashion show... yes, two guys without shirts on. Half of the kids freaked out "eeeeeeewwwww that is so gross!"

Models from fashion show...

After lunch, we did some activities. Each elementary class went to three different stations. There were lots of stations with kids everywhere. It was so fun to see what everyone was doing. We did: Making Thai food, Muay Thai, and Painting Bags. At the food station, we watched them cook a simple meal and sampled it (right after lunch might not have been my choice but thats ok!). At Muay Thai (Thai boxing) we learned three simple moves, punching, kicking, and kneeing (is that a word?!). I am sure my students would have rather learned more though! Painting Bags was probably the favorite! We were in the shade - Thank goodness! - so that always helps. Each student got a small draw string bag and painted it however they wished. They turned out great!!