Sunday, October 31, 2010

Sports Day

So I don’t know if I mentioned, but my school is really in to sports. Almost every student is involved in some sort of sport and the school will be competing in sports day in November (I think this is why our school started early to allow the kids more time to practice? I’m still not clear on this). On Thursday we were told, around 5th period, that 7-9th periods were canceled due to sports practice. Then on Friday my last two classes just didn’t show up. When I called my coordinator to ask what was going on she said, “Oh don’t worry. They are just lazy. They would rather practice sports.” Umm….ok?  Sports are more important than education? I am still getting used to the “mai pen rai” (it doesn’t matter) attitude of the school…

Somehow I was convinced to compete in a sport called paytong(?) with a bunch of the other Thai teachers. I really had no idea what the game was or what I had signed up for but on Friday afternoon I was ushered on to the field. I was given an explanation of the game (in Thai), and after a lot of wild gesturing I finally seemed to understand. I was led into position, with all of my students watching and laughing, and handed a ball. The game is very similar to bocce ball in the states so I caught on to the general objective of the game. My team lost but it was actually a lot of fun. I think we play again next week.

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