This week has certainly been my most interesting and busy week yet (excluding the orientation weeks when everything was new and surreal). Starting last Thursday, my life has been full of activities spanning as many as 3 days. Activities or sporting events seem to be loads more important than schoolwork or at least more thought out. There are plans and schedules to follow that actually get implemented, versus the school schedule which, by the end of the day, seems to be run by the students instead of administration or the teachers.
In any case, the activities I witnessed last weekend were entirely different than any I had seen yet and actually quite fun to take part in. It started with "Boy Scout camp" which encompassed Boy Scouts, Girl guides, Red Cross girls/ volunteers and the young volunteers. Each group was about a fourth of the school and they all have different uniforms to wear. Scouts (for both boys and girls) is a lot more important here than it is in the States and continues on into adulthood. Every thursday, the students that are a part of these groups wear their given uniform and they have activities once a month or something. The young red cross volunteers also do something every month (I think). As Friday morning rolled around, there were groups of students scattered around campus. They were to partake in several activities throughout the day, cook their own food for dinner, have a bonfire (depending on the group) and sleep on campus in hundreds of tents. The girl guides and boy scouts had an 8 km walk around the city for their first activity. They also went to one of the local wats (what for, I couldn't tell you). Their walk ended at a 'du sho du' camp right behind our school so it was entirely unnecessary for them to walk all that way! The 'du sho su' camp behind our school is actually where border patrol sets up camp and lives in sometimes. It actually wasn't something I ever thought of, but we do happen to have border patrol here in sleepy Nakhon Phanom as Laos is only a couple hundred meters across the river.
I ended up spending most of my time with the girl guides. They were separated from the rest of the students and spent most of their day behind school at this border patrol camp. Border patrol also helped out at the camp - they were guides for the students and set up an elaborate ropes course for them to do! There were 12 stations, ranging from web crawls (they called it spiderman) to barbed wire crawls with actual barbed wire about a foot off the ground that the students had to shimmy under. So many of the stations were a huge liability and never would have been allowed in the US! Some were 12 feet off the ground with no harness and others were just silly like crawling through a long tube like a snake. But because Kara and I knew most of the students (they were M. 1, 2, 3) we participated in these crazy ropes course stations! It was fun and honestly, pretty exhausting. Most of the courses were built for students of Thai size and kara and I sort of bumbled through some of them but the children loved it. They thought it was great and cheered us on the whole way. We tried at least half of the stations and by the time we finished, I was tired out. It was worth it though and we won some brownie points with the students...always a good thing.
That night brought pandemonium to my front doorstep. I had left the scout camps for several hours Friday night to get some dinner with the other volunteers and just hang out. As I came back with another volunteer who was staying with me for the weekend, we were met with kids covered in mud and dirt and doing more activities in the football (soccer) field. They were having a ton of fun and it felt like I was back at Camp Nonesuch helping out with the camp overnight. Teachers were standing around talking with one another and watching to make sure the students didn't hurt themselves badly and the students were running around, getting the last of their energy out before 'lights out'. I had heard that the festivities were supposed to end around 9 PM...they didn't end until 10 or so (typical...we call it 'Thai Time'). Pandemonium occurred when the entire campus ran out of water - both to bathe with and to drink - at about 11:00. Students were knocking on my door asking to use my 'hong nam', bathroom, or to get some drinking water becuase they were thirsty and the water filters on campus were empty. Even if you could drink running water, there was absolutely none on campus! I didn't have that much to spare, but I gave what I could to soem of the students and they ended up taking bucket showers behind our house. Many of them were wandering around campus until 12 or 1 looking for any water they could find...It was crazy, to say the least. Most of the students who actually came to my house, I had never seen before. It was a little worrisome having over 1000 students on campus with no water but it had returned by the next morning and things went back to normal.
Saturday morning brought the end of the camp and students were packing up, lining the street outside of our camps and waiting for their rides. They were leaving around 8:30 or so and the only reason I saw them was because I was on my way to a two day English camp at a school up the road. (Pictures and stories on that soon). Myself and two other volunteers helped out at this English camp and just had to play games and sing songs with the kids. It was all weekend but really worth it.
The third activity of the weekend was called 'kao kai' which can sort of be translated into 'boot camp'. As I've said before, attendance is extremely hard to enforce and consequences are almost nil. Except when you have boot camp. About 250 students who habitually skip class and school activities were made to stay on campus all weekend and attend this boot camp. It was almost like re-education. They were up super early in the morning and went to bed super late, spending all of their time in the grand hall and chanting for hours on end. Saturday they sang a little bit and Monday (yes, they had to skip school to attend the boot camp that was punishment for skipping school in the first place...) they sang some more. Soldiers were running the camp, and the students had to wear special shirts designated them part of this camp. Another thing that most likely wouldn't have been allowed in the US. The fallout from this type of punishment was that the students were too worn out to come to class on Tuesday...I fail to see the logic in this plan as the students missed two more days of regular classes. Either way, it didn't seem to do that much good as the students who participated in that activity still didn't show up in class this week.
This weekend brings yet another English camp, though this one isn't in Nakhon Phanom. It's down in Ubon with an organization called 'dragonfly english camps'. It should be a great experience - we (three volunteers) have paid travel down there and are put up for two nights and also get paid!
Before I'm able to go to Ubon, however, I've got to be a drum leader in a parade tomorrow. It's teacher sport day (no school for the students...) and we have to get all dressed up to walk through town. For some reason, Kara and I have to be cowboys and it's been the mission of some of the English teachers to find us cowboy boots...a mission which has failed miserably. They simply do not have big/ western style shoes here and it's extremely hard to find any that fit! But I do have a cowboy hat and plaid (sort of) shirt and jeans to wear. So, should be an interesting day - I'll take lots of pictures for sure.
I didnt have my camera for most of the activities this past week so I'm going to take some from kara and the other English teachers and those will be posted soon.
Happy end of January!!
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