Sports Day

I think it is important to mention this event, purely for the craziness of it. On the Thursday and Friday of my 3rd week we had the (poorly named) Sports Day. So this meant that nothing was done in the build up as everyone had preparation to do for it and most things take precedence over academia over here. I missed the Thursday as i was in Lamphun, the provincial town, to get my work permit which was surprisingly straightforward. Anyway Friday comes around and i head down to the football field for 7.30am in the fog which was a bad idea. I still havent adapted to thai time. This basically means that nothing starts on time and so it wasnt for another half hour or so that anything started on this day. First thing i am told is i am a judge of some sort which is news to me. So i get dragged to the table and sat down. Then a parade comes through the gate of the school and goes in front of our little table. This is the opening ceremony of te sports day which is odd as this is the second day. While this is happening i am told im supposed to be judging a description of each part of the parade in english. this is difficult as only half of the descriptions are in english and those i cant hear over the music. I should also point out at this stage that the school is split into colours or teams for the day and all this was decided a while back. the teams then compete against each other for the day and prepare everything without teacher help. I also have a colour but i dont have to compete (thank god) as the teachers are exempt. Im green, which im pleased about (being irish obviously).

Anyway back to the parade. This is a menagerie of colour with each group having a unique theme. If you look at the pictures on facebook you will see one of them was called "wizardland" which presumably has something to do with thai kids fascination with all things world of warcraft et al. I also enjoyed the marching band's rendition of 'smoke on the water'! So the kids have designed all this themselves which is pretty impressive but it gets better. Next up is the dancing. Firstly the younger kids perform their aerobic routine to some music and they finish on the ground in an impression of the olympic rings. Pretty good but then the primary school steps up and do their aerobic routine. All i could think of was how the teachers managed to get the kids to do any kind of choreography at such a young age. This bizzarelly finishes with Ronan Keating blaring out of the soundsystem (it was a medley of songs) to my complete surprise and mild disgust. Next each of the colours send out their dance troupe who are basically cheerleaders for the day. The green group demanded i get in a picture with them so i sat through a series of pictures with a gang of teenage girls all dressed up (hence why i am not smiling in my own one). Which was obviously a great challenge for me ;) Anyway the teams all put on good shows with a small bit of thai dancing in some but mostly they did their own thing. All by themselves i think.

Once the dancing is over i get told that i have to judge the shelters and cheering. I had no idea how to do this so i went and got lunch then wandered around near the shelters with the marking sheet and pen looking very obviously like a judge. The kids picked up on this and basically a heap of them from each group got up and with a few drums and bongos basically went nuts on the grass in front of their shelters. All kinds of dancing and jumping around were part of the mayhem though one group had choreographed routines which was cool. So i gave marks for the more enthususiastic gangs and the crazy looking shelters and that was my judging over for the day.

Most of the sports on this day was races so that got a bit old after an hour or so. I found out that all the others had been held the previous day which i was a bit unhappy about. I'd been looking forward to watching the takraw and badminton. The day kid of petered out bar the odd call for me to present prizes to race winners...." Teacher alan will present the next prize....Teacher alan....where is teacher alan?" This was followed by me bemusedly showing up wondering why someone was bellowing my name into a mike and being handed some certificates to hand out to kids on a podium. Oh and get my pic taken.....again.

The next day i got a bus to chiang mai again and spent the night getting drunk with Pez and Cindy as we all needed to unwind. Oh and i saw some more waterfalls.....