Wai Kru (Teacher Appreciation Day)

 With two of the English teachers before the ceremony

Today marked the day that all students acknowledge what their teachers do for them, here in Thailand. It was about an hour and a half ceremony in which students recited several buddhist prayers, sang songs dedicated to the teachers, and presented them with these flower displays that they made themselves. It's been an ongoing project for most of the week with my M.6 students preparing the actual ceremony and students from every class helping to create the offerings. Instead of having morning assembly today, we started off the ceremony at 8 am, raising the flag and saying the normal prayers. All of us teachers had seats (in the shade of course) and the student representatives from each class stood behind us. They were meant to carry their offerings and present them to the directer/ older teachers. First the M.1 students lined up to offer their flower displays (I'm not sure what they are called in Thai) and they had a certain way to sit and bow in front of the teachers taht I didn't quite pick up on. I was, of course, wandering all around taking pictures, esp as many of my students had helped to set up the whole thing. Once the flowers were offered and received, the students 'walked' to the end of the procession (on their knees), and M.6 students took the offerings and placed them on tables behind the teachers.

Raising the flag every morning 

two of my M.6 students and their offerings 

M.1 students to start off the ceremony

Kneeling before the Po'ow (Director)

When all this was finished, going through each grade seperately, there were prizes for the best display. The prizes consisted of bags or tins of cookies, and like in many competitions, all students received some sort of prize. Afterwards, the students seemed to be dispersing and those that had extra roses or incense or something went off to find the teacher they wished to honor for the day. I'm happy to say I got a few roses - but from students I don't teach...hmm. To further wai kru day, the students all had strings for the string tying ceremony. We didn't actually do the string tying ceremony with these students with the official singer and all, but we did say things like 'out with the bad, in with the new', 'good luck and good fortune', 'happiness and success', which is what they say in Thai. You brush the strings over the wrists and then tie them while the student holds up one hand. I'm not sure exactly why this is done or how it truly originated but we do it fairly often.

M.6 with their prize cookies

String tying in the office

I had been informed yesterday that M.4 students had 'camp' Thursday, Friday, and Saturday but I didn't know that they first had a party! M.1 students and M.4 students are considered to be new students at the beginning of the school year. M.1 has come from another school and M.4 are now in the 'upper' school. So they had an initiation of sorts this morning after the wai kru ceremony, which just turned into this massive party. Again, M.6 was in charge of organizing most of it so I spent most of my day in the grand hall with the students. We did the official string tying ceremony here and it was chaos of hundreds of students trying to find certain teachers to tie the string on their wrist. All of a sudden the karaoke came on and some of the M.6's started singing some popular Thai songs. It was incredible. All attention turned towards the stage and all of a sudden everyone was jumping up and down. The teachers told me it was a mini concert for the kids -while I was loving it and having a great time watching it all, they were grimacing with the noise. I got to take a lot of pictures with the kids and then there were a couple dance performances. Again, my students. With the language barrier, it's hard for me to find out anything about my students, but with activities like this, I get to see who is involved in which clubs, etc. Some of my M.6 students and some of my more mischevious M.4 students are involved in the "A Two High's Crew" which is a break dancing group. They were great, and I realized I've seen them practicing before. I never thought it was an organized thing though. The students went wild when the group came on stage and were enthralled for about 10 minutes. Lunch came next and school returned to normal for the most part. I still didn't have any classes as M.4 is involved in this bootcamp and yet again, M.6 is running it.

The B Boy break dancing 'crew'! Mostly M.4 and M.6

More M.6 students - some of them were too shy to look at the camera

And M.6 again 

The 'altar' that's part of the official string tying ceremony

'Blessing' some students - 'out with the old, in with the new'

Dancin time

M.4 students

The bootcamp seems to consist of a lot of chanting and reciting, but other than that, I don't quite understand it. It reminds me of our HS lock in, but where we had fun and games, these students are being drilled by actual soldiers. It's three days and the students sleep on campus, wake up at 5 am, and then do bootcamp activities until about 11 pm. Just a few minutes ago I had about 6 students come to my house to use my shower as 500 students have an hour to shower in the few bathrooms on campus. Or something like that. I'm planning on checking the whole thing out tomorrow as I will have a light classload.

 We had a heavy thunderstorm this afternoon and the students took this as an oppurtunity to p
lay in the rain - who wouldn't? It started off with the boys just running through and then turned into this pushing competition.

M.1 EP students running from the rain. Most of the students were soaked by the time they were meant to go home - the storm came from out of nowhere and most were in the field or at the benches hanging out.

Classes this semester are going wonderfully - lots of singing and games but I feel like I'm teaching at a different school. It's been fun getting to know the M.6 students and hopefully we'll start having class again on a regular basis...even so, it's an improvement from last semester!