Activity Day

Today was Activity Day.  Students have spent most of the week preparing.



In Mattayom, the students had tents with foodstuffs and low-investment games.  




 The English Department's Nation Culture club presenting a typical Thai snack: take a leaf from the tree outside and fold it into a cup; add slivers of ginger, shallot, lime, toasted peanut and coconut, birdseye chili, and condensed palm sugar, and pop it down the hatch.
   
Eat For Health at the Coke-Float stand, and the only recycling I've seen in Thailand: turn used cans into noisemakers.


Prattom students cruised the tents and made a bus circuit to a museum or other hoopla in the park.

English Programme students had a "Kiddie Mart" where each class sold stuff--ice cream, popsicles, syrupy-milk drinks, sauteed fishballs, fried partridge eggs, smoothies, bracelets.  

 

Based on the lunchtime rumor mill, there was tremendous pressure on the farangs to come up with an idea, purchase supplies, and demonstrate the workings.  Then, once everything was set up and students--and administrators and photographers--were circulating, the Thai teacher took over.   

I realize this could be construed as a slight to the individual Thai teachers, who work much longer hours doing much more difficult work for less pay, accolade, admiration, and aplomb than the farang counterparts, but it's intended as a critique of Thai culture in general: the concept of "farang" has no place in conjunction with the concept of "property."  Thailand and its population are immensely proud of never falling under colonial rule--Thailand guarantees twelve years of free education, of which nine are compulsory, and English is instructed in grammar, spelling, conversation, literary, and business forms; a movement to make English an official second language was vetoed for fear that it might give the impression that Thailand had once been colonized.  No matter how minor a brainfart or wispy a pipedream, anything a farang comes up with belongs to the first Thai to make use of it.  Don't even think about owning land, Thai relics, Thai gold, Thai gems, or anything else that could be construed as more monetarily or culturally significant than cut-rate Chinese imports.
Of course the Thai teachers took credit for the actual work: farangs are for sitting fat and lazy and radiating whiteness in the tropical sun.