Long live the King, Teachers’ retreat, and Christmas

Sorry, but in the last weeks I didn’t have time to update my English Blog. So now, you’ll get a summary of what I did since the beginning of December. On the 5^th of December, it was the Kings 80^th birthday, the national holiday of Thailand. In the beginning, it looked like a normal day, many people out shopping, maybe a few more with yellow shirts. Yellow is the color of the King, because he was born on a Monday. But then in the evening in our village of 150 houses, we had a celebration. Everyone came to the central square to watch the ceremonies on TV and then sing three songs: the royal anthem, “Sadudi Maha Ratcha” (“Praise the King”) and “Por Haeng Paen Din” (“Father of the Land”). The last one, even I could sing, because it’s been on the radio all the time since I came here. So my Thai is getting better, but I still have a long way to go. On Thursday (Dec 6), I went to see the fireworks in the city. Very nice, and they managed to draw an 80 in the sky.

Last Thursday-Saturday, I went to Ko Chang (Elephant Island, in the East of Thailand) with most of the other teachers from my school for the teachers retreat. Really nice place, and for us foreign teachers it was just relaxing for three days. The Thais had a seminar for half a day, and then some of us went on a speedboat to go snorkeling at the neighboring island. Had lots of fun there. For pictures, check out my German Blog (post of Dec 17, http://klausinthailand.blogspot.com).

Today, it was the Christmas celebration at my school. Since the 25^th is no holiday, we will have school then, too, but the students have midterm exams then. So the foreign teachers dressed up like Santas and we sang “Mary’s Boy Child” and “Feliz Navidad”. I even sang a Spanish song on stage while two students played guitar. I can’t speak Spanish, but I guess I did ok ;-). It wasn’t even a Christmas song, but this day was all about foreign languages, not only Christmas. Again, I got a picture on my German Blog.

AFS Thailand is 45 years old

AFS exchange programs have been around for 60 years now. Just some background for all of you who don’t know: AFS was founded during World War 1 as the “American Field Service” in France. In the beginning, they were similar to the Red Cross, taking care of wounded people regardless of their nationalities. I don’t know who has been around for longer, the Red Cross or AFS. In World War 2 among other things they helped after Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp was freed (that’s close to Hannover, my hometown in Germany). After the war, they thought that something had to be done to ensure this would not happen again. So they started youth exchange programs and in 1947, the first 52 AFSers from 10 countries came to the States. The year after that, Germany was included in the program and later even the daughter of Albert Speer, Minister of Armament and Munitions under Hitler, went on an AFS program. And so on… By now, AFS has partners in 80 countries and since 1970, programs are multinational and not only to and from the USA. AFS Thailand started in 1962.

So, even though a 45^th anniversary might not sound like a big thing, they made it one! This year is very important to all Thais, because His Majesty the King will have His 80^th Birthday …tomorrow! Did I tell you that ALL Thais love their King? Well, back to AFS. Last Friday was the 45 years Gala Dinner in the Rama Gardens Hotel (not a bad one). Jan, the other German in the same program as me, and I didn’t know if we would be allowed to go there, until finally on Wednesday the other AFS staff found a little task that we could do there and our boss agreed. That’s Thailand and AFS is no different. At that night, there were many AFS staff and volunteers from all over the world. So I could talk and dance with people from Australia, Malaysia, Italy, Hungary, Austria, Japan, USA and Germany. In those occasions, you notice how big AFS actually is.
What else? There were many songs to honor the King, because His Birthday is coming up so soon.
A speech from Dr. Surin Pitsuwan, former AFSer Thailand to USA, former Thai foreign minister and in 08 he will be Secretary General of ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. That is something like the Asian EU, at least moving towards something like the EU. It was partly about global warming (like many things here right now, but it doesn’t stop them from littering everywhere) but mainly about how AFS gave him as a poor boy from a small village a chance and a scholarship. And he sure took the chance.
Also the singer of the official AFS song (“Walk together, Talk together”), Supapong Krishnakan, also a former exchange student from Thailand.
The color of the evening was yellow, so I borrowed a jacket from my AFS-advisor’s husband and a yellow shirt and tie from my host father.

Talk to you later
Klaus

PS: I will not upload the pictures to this blog, please check them out on http://klausinthailand.blogspot.com, the German version of the blog.

Loy Krathong

Lots of people at our temple

Full moon, as good as my camera will get it...
More news! Saturday night, we had the full moon of November, which is the 12^th lunar month (don’t ask me why). In Thailand, this day the Loy Krathong festival takes place. “Loy” means to send away and a “Krathong” is a little boat made of banana leaves. To celebrate it, I went to our local temple with my host family (about 10 minutes away by foot) and everyone “sent away” such a little boat, on the Temple’s pond. Before sending it away, we lit the candle on the Krathong and made a wish. On the Temple grounds, there were many people, pretty much everyone from our neighborhood. Some monks were speaking to the people, there was a lottery, some shows and of course A LOT to eat (we’re in Thailand). After the temple, I went to downtown Bangkok to catch some of the atmosphere at the Chao Phraya River, the main river of Bangkok. But we got stuck in traffic, so we didn’t have much time once we were there.

On Friday morning, my school had its own Loy Krathong festival. In first period, there was a show with some singing and dancing. Thursday, the head of the English department had asked me if I wanted to sing the Loy Krathong song in English on stage in front of all students. Sure, why not, some Thai students sang with me, so it was no problem. They even gave me some traditional Thai clothes to wear.
That’s it for now
Klaus

Sports Day

The parade

And the band

The teacher's soccer team.
I decided to translate my Blog to English, so it is not only for German speaking people. It will be basically the same as the German version, but I probably won’t translate the posts until now. OK, here we go:

Last Wednesday and Thursday was the Sports Day of my school (if anyone speaks Thai, this is my school’s site: http://www.dmj.ac.th/). Sports Day is one of the biggest events in Thai schools. The whole school had been preparing for it since last semester (in Thailand, it’s 1^st Semester: May-Sep and 2^nd: Nov-Mar). Most of the competitions were on Wednesday, every student played soccer, badminton, basketball, volleyball, table tennis, or even Boule/Petanque. My host brother Min (17 years and in 12^th grade) won a gold medal in Badminton.

On Thursday, there was the BIG parade. Usually, the school day starts with the assembly of all students, singing the national anthem, praying together and one or more speeches by teachers, maybe some awards for students and maybe singing the school’s song or the King’s birthday song (he will turn 80 on December 5). But that day, it was a parade of almost all students. They were in five teams of colors (yellow, pink, green, orange, and blue, like the days of the week) and each team did their own part of the parade. My host brother carried the flag of his team, the yellow one. You couldn’t recognize some of the girls as they could finally take off their school uniform and dress up. On the soccer field, they then had some shows. After that, there was a soccer match between students and teachers. And since I’m German, of course I had to be in the teacher’s team. I guess they expected a little more skills from me, but our team still won 3-1. Maybe the students didn’t want to be mean to their teachers, but some in our team were really good.

After soccer, there were the runners. In the heat of Thailand, a few of them had problems and someone actually fainted. In the end, they had the awards for the best teams (pink won this time) and everyone sang “Auld lang Syne” together. Was a fun day!