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!!

food making

Muay Thai

 Painting bags

By the end of the day we were all exhausted and ready to go home.  It was a day to remember for sure. The only picture I took of myself!

Sorry for the super long post full of pictures, but hopefully you enjoyed seeing cultural days at a Thailand international school!

Teaching and Thailand...

Well today I was hoping to link up with Tara and Monday Made Its, but my day was quickly changed. Yesterday we found the house of our dreams. It was perfect.  Perfect cost, perfect location, perfect everything.  We told the owners we wanted the house and were planning on giving them a deposit this afternoon.  (side note, it is Tuesday night here just to clarify.)  So hubby and I decided to do some work on my classroom before meeting with the owners.  While working this morning we got a phone call saying that the owners accepted money from someone else this morning, thus taking the house away from us.  It was so incredibly sad.  

This beauty was 'our' house..... ($475 US dollars)

Anyway, our perfect afternoon turned into a sad and very different afternoon.  We ended up seeing a few more houses but could not get over the sadness... haha.  SO, after all of this we did end up getting a few things done in my classroom but not enough to show yet.  

But I did want to share a few other things about Thailand.  I went to the market yesterday and bought some fabric.  This was my first trip to the market and it was so cool.  But while there I bought 3 different fabrics for about 2 dollars a meter.  I was quite impressed with this cost. I guess I'm not too familiar with costs in the States but I bought 10.5 meters of fabric for 22 dollars.  I have 3 large bulletin boards and 2 small ones in the front (one of which I left covered in paper)  Anyway, this is my fabric.  The left fabric doesn't show well but I have close up pics too ;)

These are the close ups.  I LOVE the multi-colored one and wish I would have gotten other more colorful ones as well.... guess I will have to go back!

black and white

favorite :)

black and white polka dots :)

The other thing I am very excited about but do not have pictures for are baskets!! Baskets here come in ALL colors and sizes and are also very cheap!! I already have quite the stash in my room and will make great use of them. But I am very happy that they are cheap and readily available. I cant wait to label them and have a place for everything!  I hope to share pictures soon of some of the things I am doing.  I still need to get access to a printer so I don't have to hand write a bunch of things.... please let the printer be available soon!!