A week for games and dancing

(July 2012)

It is an honest wonder how students in Thailand manage to learn anything ever. Between the teachers seminars, the holidays, the preparation for the holidays, competitions, and anything else that seems like a good idea to interrupt education, I feel like I hardly teach. And this is the serious semester! Two months into the semester, and I think I have not taught a full week of classes. But I’ve had a ton of fun in the meantime, of course.

As well as a lot of unnecessary work. The wonderful Ministry of Education selected this semester to be hell, and has required multiple teachers seminars. After teaching my third teachers’ seminar last week, I really think the teachers of Sukhothai must be sick of this farang pretending to know what she’s talking about. But I have met every single English teacher in all of Sukhothai (and told them how to teach English, from my loads of experience…), so that must count for something. The last seminar I taught was in Thung Salium, the neighboring district, and was done barefoot. That was definitely the highlight of that seminar; not the lunch time karaoke, nor the head of the Northern Sukhothai educational office interrupting me mid-session to take 15 minutes to remind everyone of his importance, nor the 43 page manual I had to create from scratch to give the teachers. And believe it or not, the director of the school changing his mind about what he wanted me to teach the morning of the seminar after I gave him the 43 page manual on my sessions, asking me to instead teach “daily conversation skills” for two days, no that was not the highlight either. The highlight was definitely taking off my shoes and teaching 50 teachers in my bare feet. Yes, still love Thailand <3

And this was all following the best week I’ve had at SawanAnan, because it was our sports week. Remember Field Day from middle school? It’s like that..but Thai style. That means, it’s not just a one day thing. It’s a week long, and includes an opening parade through town and a day of closing ceremonies with dancing and cheerleading. The sports were definitely not the focus of sports week. Sports week is actually just a misnomer for lots of fun and craziness.

So Monday morning we headed to the middle of Sawankahlok to observe the parade. The students chose the color they wanted their class to be, out of red, blue, green, violet, and “zad”, which translates as bright. Or orange. Each color had a magnificent display during the parade, which, I know I’ve said this before, but I don’t know how they had the time to prepare for. I guess it was during all those classes my students cancelled the preceding weeks. As I was watching this massive parade, there were definitely students in the marching bands that I didn’t recognize, plus our marching isn’t THAT good. And the kids playing were really small! I asked P’Oom where these kids were from. She told me they were from SawanAnan 2. (Have I mentioned Sawan Anan 2? It’s another school in Sawankhalok- they took our name because they want people to think they are as good as us. You have to test to get into Sawananan, and pay extra, but SawanAnan 2 is just a normal school. It’s a really funny thing, which probably isn’t funny for them, but we joke about it all the time. Ahjan Anick likes to punish bad students that come late for the morning announcements by making them stand in the back, and yelling “stay away from these guys! They’re from Sawananan 2!) But apparently Sawananan 2 has better marching bands than us, because we stole them for our sports week. I’m starting to think the reason Sawankhalok exists is because of Sawananan. The whole town has to come to a halt for the opening of our sports week.

The parade marched from the center of town all the way to Sawananan, about a mile long distance, the girls in their high heels and massive wigs, the boys in their heavy suits. (And these students come to my class whining about being hungry or being hot? Look at what they put themselves through to put on a good parade. Nobody told them they had to wear high heels, that was all voluntary) We assembled on the front lawn at school, where two of my 10^th graders ran laps around the field wearing full sweat suits and carrying a torch (again, all voluntary). Once they had assembled, one of the teachers told me that the teachers are going to play a soccer game for the opening ceremony. I’m glad he decided to tell me then, 5 minutes before the game was going to start, to give me barely enough time to run home and grab my cleats. He gave me a teachers’ jersey (FINALLY! I’ve been playing with them after school since last semester, but they never let me play in their games because I’m a girl) and I realized why they were letting me play this time. The opening match was against the lady boys: Teachers vs. the Gatoeys. I don’t know whose idea it was, the teachers’ or the gatoeys’, but it was absolutely genius. We were all decked out in our fancy jerseys, as the gatoeys took the field, decked out in their dresses and wigs, some even still wearing high heels.

Though it’s a  bit embarrassing to admit, given that they were playing against a team of fairly well-practiced teachers, for a team of gay men wanting to be women, the lady boys did okay. The teachers still won, 4-1, but the lady boys had a good tactic: as a heard run after anyone with the ball and tackle (hug) him until he falls to the ground and steal the ball. What a fantastic way to open a week long sports competition.

And the gatoeys ran the show all week. This must be the week they look forward to their entire high school career. The students don’t have to wear their uniforms (though they’re supposed to wear their gym uniforms, they can get away with street clothes) so the gatoeys have been running around all week in skirts, belly shirts and wigs. “Rocky”, the leaders of the gatoeys, probably danced straight from Monday morning until Friday afternoon in his belly shirt and short skirt. And the funny thing is, no girl would be allowed to wear that at school EVER, even on sports week. But if you’re a ladyboy, it’s okay.

The rest of the week was a continual blast. We spent the days watching the Thai variety of sports: chak-rai-ya (tug-o-war), sepak takraw, football, footsaul, volleyball, table tennis, badminton, basketball and wing priao (which is a relay race but translates to sour run), all played with a level of competitiveness I didn’t think possible for a school wide sports competition. By the way- lady boys are killer at volleyball. All sports were separated by boys and girls, then by age group, and any boys’ team that had a ladyboy on it always won volleyball. Though the real reason to enjoy sports week is not to watch any sports, but to watch the dancing and cheers. Most students don’t like to play sports (because it makes their skin “black”), so they stand on the sidelines with their winter coats covering their arms from the blackening sun, and dance. All day. Every team had a set of bongos and megaphone, and there was nonstop dancing, cheering, and partying on the sideline of every game. Didn’t matter who was winning, didn’t matter when someone scored a goal, there were flags being waved and drums being drummed at every moment. Then when the game was over (doesn’t matter who won), the field or court got flooded with the cheerleaders from both sides, making a dance circle and yelling the appropriate cheers. Every game.

 

Halfway through the week, some tension started growing between the teams. The two smartest 12^th grade classes (that basically were the bosses of sports week) were on different teams, and picked their allies and started a school wide battle. Team “zad” took team violet under its wing, and team red took team blue. Then team green was just uninterested enough to not really be pulled into battle, but eventually sided with red. This all escalated in a basketball match between red and purple, where the whole orange team was cheering at their full capacity for purple. Red got disqualified for poor sportsmanship and there was a huge roar of cheers from orange as they filled the court with their cheerleading, drums and dancing. This whole debacle was the entire content of the F-team’s 4^th of July dinner conversation, which was a holiday that passed completely unnoticed in the wake of sports week, except for an excessive amount of food from the night market: fried chicken (the most American part!), steamed vegetables with nahm prick, an omelet stuffed with cha-om veggies, scallion dumpling things, aaaand Chang beer. Not quite the same as an American celebration, but it was as close as we could get for the amount of energy we had that week.

The last day of sports day ended in a 3 hour performance put on by the students. This was what they had been practicing for about a month. Every day after school, every free period, during classes they should have been going to, and every weekend, all the teams were practicing their performances with their hired gatoeys. So finally the performance day arrived where each time had 25 minutes to put on their show. Each show had their own variety of cheers, some form of ballet, and excessive hip thrusting that made everyone burst out laughing but also feel a little awkward. The blue team was by far the best, with fireworks, releasing balloons into the sky (which I don’t approve of but looks really cool), some moments for the King, all followed by a lot of overly energetic dancing and ended with buckets of water to pour on the dancing gatoey boys.

One of the gatoeys on Green lost his wig in the middle of their dance

Among this week of craziness, the Chinese opera also came to town. Yep, that’s right. The Chinese opera. What is the Chinese opera? I have no freakin clue, but it brought an 11 day festival market to Sawankhalok, which of course I love, and involved a Chinese dragon dance through town randomly on the Monday after the market had started (why not the opening night of the market, the opening night of the opera, or Saturday….why Monday? Who knows). Though I never made it to watch the Chinese opera, I got to see my second dragon dance (the first was on the King’s birthday last December), which involves crazy 10 year old gymnasts run around holding the dragon, making the dragon do flips and chase its tail. And like any good dragon show, it ends with them placing a precarious pole in the middle of the street for the dancers to climb, then pass the dragon up the pole so they can shoot fireworks from his mouth to shower onto the innocent observers. SO exciting.

In other news in Sawankhalok, BaNee opened up a new rice porridge shop in front of her house. She closed the one at Soi8, the night market, which is now very lonely without her presence. The night before her opening night, I went to her house to help her get things ready. I sat with her staff for hours and stuck “BaNee Jok” stickers on amulets to give out to every customer on the first day, and made little packages of snacks to give to kids. We had a big feast of fresh shrimp yum, soup, omelet, and a Thai salad with lots of liver.
After finishing up, I was instructed by BaNee to come straight to her house after school the next day, wear the “BaNee Jok” tee-shirt she gave me, and help her sell jok. So I biked over as soon as I had finished up at school, around 5, and there was already a line waiting for their jok to take home, and the tables almost filled. I arrived ready to work, but didn’t really have anything to do…if roles had been discussed prior, I definitely missed them. So I sat with BaNee’s sister who came up from Bangkok for the big opening night, and pretended to do things that looked important. This included: giving out the amulets to every customer (a very important job), refilling eggs and cilantro, and most importantly, opening the plastic bags for P’Kwan to pour the jok into. BaNee definitely would not have been able to function without me. She sold out at 8PM, with a line still waiting, and never a moment for any of the staff to sit down. Except me, who was sitting the whole time.
 

Though I’m essentially useless, I go to BaNee’s any night that I am free to “help”. I think eventually I will become an integral part of her staff. Maybe not. But it is a great way to check up on my students. Every night I am there, I see at least one of my students. On opening night, one of my M3 students showed up in her pajamas, my homework assignment in hand, and said “teacher. Too hard”. The second night, my bad boys from M4 came with their older girlfriends. My boys were too shy to speak to me, but the girls were excited to talk to me. Well, at least they’re dating good girls. After selling out at 8:30 on the second night, I sat down to have dinner with BaNee. I had already eaten earlier in the evening, so I just picked on some fish and had a bit of tom yum soup. After BaNee had finished her dinner, she decided she wanted to go to a restaurant to “gin len len”, which translates to “play eat” and means to eat like a snack, or pick on food, whereas “gin jing jing” is “real eat” and means to eat a meal. So after BaNee, her sister, her sister’s boyfriend and I finished “gin jing jing”, we went to one of Sawankhalok’s only air-conditioned restaurants to “gin len len”, where BaNee ordered five plates for us of fried fish, soup, noodles and crab cakes. Way too much food for a meal, let alone a “len len” meal. I was so full I could barely bike home. I thought I would never eat again. But then I made the mistake of calling BaNee to get lunch together the next day. We drove to Sri Samrong to get som tam, but the shop wasn’t open yet. So she decided we should “gin len len” until it opens, so we went a little outside of the town to have noodles on the river. Then, we went back to the shop to get our som tam, our “jing jing” meal. But the shop still wasn’t open. So we drove all around Sri Samrong, along the river, BaNee racking her brain of where we can get som tam, declaring to her passengers, “Som tan len dtua”- som tam is playing hard to get, and giggling to herself. We found a gaiyang stand on the side of the road, so we settled with large portions of  grilled chicken and sticky rice, the accompaniments to som tam, without the actual som tam. That was fine with me because I was already stuffed. I only picked at the gaiyang when we got back to BaNee’s house, and I told BaNee, next time she wants to “gin len len”, count me out! She’s already teasing me that if I keep eating with her, my mother won’t recognize me when I come home because I’ll be fat. So I’ve had to scale down on my lunches with BaNee.

After all these exciting things happening in a few weeks: sports week, teaching more seminars, the Chinese opera, and BaNee’s opening night, the whirlwind collapsed into midterms. How did that happen!? I feel like I haven’t taught my kids anything yet, how can they possibly be tested on anything? For a slightly more serious semester than last semester, it is still a wonder to me how these students, even at a good school like SawanAnan have managed to learn anything. Part of the craziness that makes Thailand.