School Prayers

I couldn't tell you what this was for exactly, sometime to do with it being a celebration for teachers, praying for and thanking teachers. Whatever it was exactly, there were some stunning flowers and it was all pretty good fun. The whole day had a relaxed (even more then usual) atmosphere about it (although maybe that's because I only had to teach the youngest kindergärtner group for 20 minutes then it was several hours break and class 5 followed by class 6).

So the crowds gathered. The stage had been built. The flowers were ready. The bell started ringing and I was asked to take lots of photo's because the main school camera hadn't been brought for some reason. Luckily I had spare batteries, a fresh memory card and my battery charger.

Then it all began, prayers were said and songs were sung. The first row of kids moved up, handing their offerings and saying their prayers. After four or five more rows, a monk arrived, one I hadn't seen before (we have a fair few monks visit the school, giving morning assemblies and teaching classes). He led some more prayers and talked for a bit before some of the teachers made offerings to him.

There was more singing and the playground began to empty. Normal lessons started up, about half an hour late, but most of the kids actually went around handing out their flowers and making more prayers for individual teachers for the next hour. Over the rest of the morning more photo's were taken and in the afternoon it was very chilled. The kids practiced a play, but it was all cut short and people went inside when it started raining.

The entire album can be found here

And the Vlog will be up this evening

An evening of architecture

Yesterday I got invited out to an opening of an architecture exhibit. Many of Mai's friends study it and their work was going on display at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center. I finished work a little earlier then usual (around 3:45) and headed home. I got showered, changed and grabbed a bit of food before heading back out. I was going to meet her at the National Stadium BTS Station.

So I jumped on the 134. It was right at the beginning of rush hour. The journey should take, with no traffic, about twenty minutes, maybe half an hour. Last night it took two hours. Somewhere I heard or read that Bangkok is the most congested city in Asia, it's not hard to see why. There are a lot of huge road work projects, building highways above the city to alleviate the problems, but just how much of an effect they will have isn't really known. The city has a great public transport system with it's buses and vans. People here don't walk very far, just to the nearest bus station. The pavements aren't really pedestrian friendly in a lot of areas and buses are so cheap is makes sense to hop on a bus that's going to cost 3p to get a mile down the road.

I finally got the Mochit BTS, the 'end of the line' or 'beginning of the line' station, depending on how you look at it. I got the sky train to Siam, where I changed over to the next line, and rode it just a single stop of National Stadium. Like everywhere at that time of day,the train was rammed with people. Both of them. I got of the train, went through the barrier and called Mai. Again a fair bit of "Erm I am.... I don't know, I'm by a big red sign that say's 'Tokto'. Okay I'm downstairs and by a giant head!" we eventually found each other. I was a few hours late, but the exhibit hadn't opened yet.

A busy BTS station

When it did open, I had a look around, got some free food that was insanely spicy and then just did what I enjoy doing when I'm out in Thailand, talked to people. Of the three hours or so I was there, I spent maybe half an hour looking around. The rest of the time I was just chatting with people, showing off my three Thai phrases, then after they say they speak "a little English" it turns out they are damn near fluent and have better grammar then the majority of people who went to my old secondary school (This isn't that difficult. The 8 year olds I'm teaching how to ask and answer questions have better grammar then the majority of people who went to my old secondary school).

The name of the exhibit

I didn't touch a drop

One of the people I was talking to, but I can't remember her name :/

Honest to god I didn't touch a drop!

I passed on the FREE alcohol. Very proud of myself for that. Stuck with water thank you very much. The evening ended very suddenly with the security moving people out to close the place, and I jumped back on the various trains and buses and got home in about forty minutes (as appose to two and a half hours it took to get there).

Check out the vlog for this here; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzdBwZhM3-M

Build up to New Year

So in the week between the Christmas and New Year weekends there was a lot of teaching carols, like Jingle Bells. I was also invited out with various people for various things across the 4 day holiday that was coming up. So I spent the week trying to work out what I was doing with who and one what days/night. I wanted to share a collection of some of my favourite pictures of the kids in that week.