Thanksgiving and the Kings' Birthday

Chaiyaphum sunset right outside my apartment

Being sick sucks. Being a sick teacher in a foreign country really sucks.  I ended up having to miss a day of work, but it's unavoidable, especially when I'm surrounded by my 250 students I see everyday.   Finally feeling like my old self again, just in time for my visa trip to Laos this weekend. 

I figured I should update on Thanksgiving finally, especially before Christmas.  Obviously I had to work on Thanksgiving, and given one of my classes just had a quiz in their first block with me, it was only fitting to educate them about American Thanksgiving in their second class with me that day.  Naturally, I had my M2 students (13/14 year olds-8th graders) trace their hands and make hand turkeys.  They enjoyed it, and it was the perfect lesson to plan (also I was sick that day, so explaining about American Thanksgiving and turkeys was much easier for my brain to comprehend.  Something about being in a developing country, dust, and germy kids tends to keep getting me sick- who would've thought?). 

My M2s hard at work tracing their hands for hand turkeys

"Hold up your turkeys! I want a picture!" Sometimes it's good to let them be kids.

These kids can draw better than I can. 

That Thursday night, a bunch of teacher farongs from around Chaiyaphum got together at a restaurant we go to a lot for lunch, and had a friendsgiving dinner.  It was delicious-no I didn't eat turkey.  The lady that owns the place, Bun, knows I'm a vegetarian, there are a couple vegetarians here, and made a special vegetable pot pie for me.  My phone died as soon as I got there, so I wasn't able to get a bunch of photos but it was nice to have some Thanksgiving food-mashed potatoes, veggies, meatless stuffing, something other than Thai food.  We had a nice meal, hung out for a few hours, then went home- we still had work the next day.

American Thanksgiving

Friday, December 5th is the King's Birthday.  It's quite a big deal with celebrations running all that week.  December 5th is considered a national holiday, so we had no school and got to have a nice 4 day work week.  That Thursday, there was a giant celebration assembly to honor the King and his birthday.  Thai teachers wore their white uniforms, and the foreign teachers wore yellow.  It's customary to wear yellow because the King was born on a Monday-which is the color yellow  (Thailand has different colors for the days of the week).  For the month of December however, we wear yellow on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday to honor the King.  

The morning assembly was decorated in yellow, golds, and every shade inbetween.  After the assembly, all the teachers waited in line to sign what I could only assume is similar to a guest book for the king.  We- the foreign teachers signed it too.  Long live the King.

The students sitting in their perfect class lines. 

English teachers and the girls in the Thai costumes are actually our students

Some of my students-yes, all 5 rows of them. 

So. Much. Yellow. The King's birthday is also Father's day, we wrote little notes to our fathers and stuck it on the tree.

Next week, the kids have "Sports Week," so there are no classes, but we still come into work to get our grade books in order.  I'm missing Monday and Tuesday for Laos, but it will be nice to have time to work on grades for my students.  Sports week is just like sports day in the states, but this lasts a whole week.  It's a fun week before midterms for students to compete against their classmates with badminton, basketball, table tennis, and other fun sports.  My students have been working hard, they deserve this fun week before I have to cram some review material into their noggins.  

On that note, I will leave you with my Work Permit photo which looks absolutely nothing like me.  One, I'm not smiling, and two, hello photoshop.  I went into get my photo taken the other day, when I was sick, so the original picture looked like death.  The picture came out looking like I wore make up to begin with. Not too shabby, Thailand.