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Published: January 12th 2012
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After our weekend in Hue Hin we returned to school on Sports Day. Sports Day happens every semester and it's a day dedicated to sports for the kids. So another non-teaching day for us teachers! We were even allowed to wear pants on this day! Everyone was taken by the bus load to a sports facility just outside the town. At first we thought that it was going to be a big citywide event where the schools compete against one another but it turned out that each grade within our school competed against one another. Each grade had a specific team color and not all students performed in the athletic activities, just a few but the rest of the grades cheered on their colors. It reminded me of Hogwarts and the different houses. Each team had a dance group/cheer squad leading cheers all throughout the morning. The outfits for the cheer squads were spectacular and sometimes a bit questionable if appropriate for high school students. We wondered if they have the same outfits every year or if they spent the time to create them for this one event. They were so unique and the girls looked outstanding. There was no way
that I could recognize any of my students with their costumes and all the make up. They looked so much older than when they are in their uniforms.
The day started with a massive assembly with all the students sitting on the field listening to their director. After he was done droning on, the kids not participating in the sports paraded to the stadium and took their seats within their team colors. The cheer squads took their place in front of their grade's colors and started pumping them up right away. It was almost like a mock Olympics.. They even had a boy and girl jog with a flame to a cup to light it up for the day. Too bad the sports performances were not anywhere close to Olympic standards… kids in the middle of their races would start walking when they got tired! Oh Thailand! Your people are so lazy! It's funny because the week before I covered hobbies in my classes and 50% of the responses to my question "what is your hobby?" were "sleeping" and the other "facebook". It was nice to have a day outside with the kids though and everyone truly
enjoyed themselves. I wish we had more sports days! It's a shame that they only get to have something to cheer on once a semester. It's definitely not like an American high school with all our sporting events and pep rallies. I bet they would love that here.
So after a Monday off and a Tuesday of sports we taught Wednesday and Thursday. Come Thursday we were told that Friday would be their "Religion" test and it would take all day so there were no classes again! We still had to show up to work but it was an internet day. Can't say I hate 2 day work weeks! We never know when something is coming up, feels like we are always the last to know! It seems like I've only seen my Monday classes 4 or 5 times this whole semester due to all the holidays!
That Friday, we went out with our apartment manager, Boom. Boom speaks very good English and is a blast to be around. She wanted to show us that Samut Sakhon does have a night life! And we were shocked to see that it really does! Mahachai is
really improving day by day it seems. It's a bit on the outskirts of town but there is a strip of bars, pool halls, and dance clubs. There were 6 of us farangs parading through this strip hopping from bar to bar to get a feel for the place and I'm sure we were a sight to see! At our first bar, there was a live band and they instantly welcomed us to Thailand and started singing English covers for us. Gotta love how welcoming Thailand is!
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