School competitions/ karaoke/ and Loy Kratong Festival

The school competition last weekend was a lot of fun. I yet again went through a little bit of shock when I saw other white people walking around! The other schools that came to compete brought their own foreign English teachers so we made some new contacts which is nice.

The highlight of my day was no doubt the drama section which Shaleas was judging. Three schools including ours competed. We performed Peter Pan (one of my best students was Wendy, I was so proud!) and the other schools performed Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella. It was absolutely rolling-on-the-floor hilarious. The scripts were clearly written by their Thai English teachers, who sometimes get the grammar just a little bit wrong. That along with Thai people's inability to pronounce certain English sounds resulted in the weirdest versions of my favourite childhood stories ever. Including Peter Pan asking Wendy "you come ON me" instead of "come with me (to Neverland)." Oh goodness.

That weekend, Kelly, Shaleas and I also went to one of the two nice restaurants in this village that we have discovered which also happens to be a karaoke place. The great thing about singing karaoke in Thailand is that a) everybody does it, so there's no escaping, b) they are all really bad singers so there's no intimidation, and c) if you're singing English songs, which clearly we were, it doesn't really matter anyway because they have no idea what you're saying. 

So I did what I consider an expert rendition of 'My Heart Will Go On,' Kelly chose 'I Just Called to Say I Love You' and the three of us did a great version of 'Wonderwall' among many other songs. When we got back to the school at about 10pm we discovered a bunch of teachers having their own karaoke party in the gym, so we briefly joined them as well. They really really love karaoke here.

Last night was Loy Kratong festival which was amazing. It's a beautiful festival centred around the river, I recommend you read more about it, but I don't want to bore you all here. There's a short paragraph about it here

During lunch period the students set off huge balloons made out of tissue paper into the air by filling them with hot air. Then we decided to cancel our afternoon classes and our coordinators took us to the salon instead to get our hair and makeup done and get us dressed in traditional Thai costume. They didn't have any makeup pale enough for my British skin, so I looked a little bit like I'd been fake tanning, but other than that it was pretty awesome. 

Then we inadvertently ended up leading the entire parade! Kelly and I were grabbing a quick bite to eat at the market and saw the parade starting, so we went up to take photos. The two women in front were carrying a big photo each, one of the king and one of the queen. They came up to us, took our bags/food and handed us the photos! So I walked the 1.5 - 2 mile stretch from the fresh market to the festival grounds by the river leading a parade holding the queen in my hands! It was great fun, and a huge honour to get to do all of that; I loved it.

At the festival we hung out, watched some ADORABLE Thai children dancing, and watched part of a beauty contest for 'Miss Loy Kratong' before heading home and collapsing into bed.

I sent post cards today! I'm working through my address book alphabetically, so if you're last name starts between A - K and I have your address, you will hopefully get a postcard before I get back to England... I don't have a lot of your addresses yet, so send them along and I'll write to you too!

Finally, the wonderful Nims Laban gets a shout out for being the first person to make use of that mailing address I posted. She sent me THREE wonderful care packages so far including some glossy mags and yummy chocolate! Thanks Nims! You should all follow her example.  

I am TRYING to upload photos but my internet connection can't really handle it, so I'm sorry for the lack of picture evidence, I swear I'm doing my best!