Yesterday near the end of the day Noi told me there were no classes today.  Ok.  Not sure why Pat didn’t tell me this.  It’s Teacher’s Day.  There are ceremonies in the morning and in the afternoon there’s Freshman Orientation.  It happens once a year in the first semester.

I got to school and all the teachers were wearing their government uniforms.  The students were all wearing their blue uniforms.  The students and teachers all had food.  I would have loved it if someone had filled me in on this first ceremony so I could have brought food too.  The first ceremony was to give the food to monks.  They had seats for the monks and they had their food donation bowls.  The teachers went first.  One of the teachers grabbed me and held my hand as I took her food offering and put some in each bowl.  After the teachers, the students followed.  As the bowls filled up, there were students that took the food and put it in bags and then took the bags to a pickup truck.  The monks got an entire pickup truck of boxed milk and junk food.  It was a touching ceremony, but also sad that junk food is the food gift of choice.  I hope they get better food on most days.  They eat entirely from food donated to them.  I think they go out every morning with their bowls asking for food.  Not sure where they go as I’ve never seen this, but have only heard of it.

Next was sitting in the meeting hall as the monks sat on the stage and chanted.  They sat in a line and had their hands out in front of them.  There was a string laying on top of their arms draped from one monk to the next.  At some point I asked Pat what the string was for.  She said it was holy string.  Oh, of course.  She pointed to a couple of students that had string on their wrists like bracelets.  Holy string.  After the chanting, one monk walked around the meeting hall with a bowl of water and a wand of reeds in his hand.  He used the reeds to spray water on everyone as he walked by.  Holy water, of course.  When he got to Robin, he took the reeds and smacked him on the head twice.  The monk has a sense of humor!  Then there was another offering of food which was in stackable lunch boxes.  This looked like real food and made me feel a little better.  Pat told me this was for the monk’s lunch.  They have to eat before noon.  Monks don’t eat after noon.  After noon they can drink liquids as long as they aren’t made from animals like milk.  But no food.

After the monks left to go have lunch, the Teacher ceremony started.  They moved chairs up onto the stage for us.  As they were making announcements, the teachers were all giddy and giggly.  They weren’t listening to the announcements at all. They were talking amonst themselves.  It occurred to me that maybe they were nervous being on stage.  The students had made the most detailed intricate flower arrangements I’ve ever seen.  They brought them up to the stage and bowed at the shrine and then walked on their knees to the Director and gave them to him.  I think there were two per class.  After that they moved us to the floor below the stage and the students came up one at a time and brought offerings of flowers and bowed at our feet.  This ceremony is the student asking the teacher to teach them and the teacher promising to teach.

After the ceremony I went to lunch with Noi.  We got lunch at a noodle place.  Largest bowls ever.  Then it was off to run errands.  She stopped at one point and pointed to some red berries and asked me what they were in English.  I have no idea.  They are manaou hoo.  Manaou is lime so they are sour like limes.  She mentioned that I had a great memory, but I told her I didn’t think so.  If I did, I’d be able to speak Thai.  She said maybe I didn’t have good memory with languages, but I did with calculations.  I thought, maybe not calculations, but spatial.  I have good spacial memory.  I see things spatially and I see and remember patterns and shapes.  I think this is why the butterflies are so wonderful to me.  We don’t usually pay much attention to air.  But there are so many butterflies here that you can’t look off into the distance without seeing butterflies in the sky.  My brain is use to seeing nothing in the air around me or it interprets it as nothing, but now that it is filled with butterflies, my brain picks up on the change in spatial input.  I’m now paying attention to the air, the space, the place where there was never nothing, but I wasn’t paying attention to it before.  The butterflies are shaking up the normal spatial perception and it’s like a fun game to my brain.  I think this is why I love the purple ones too.  There’s ground and my brain knows ground so it pays no attention.  Then the ground moves and changes colors and my brain has to switch out of automatic.  At this point, there’s no choice but to be completely present.

After lunch, the students did Freshman Orientation which I think is more like Freshman Hazing.  Each class created an activity for the freshman to do.  I’m not sure what the activities were as I used this time to work on lesson plans, but when ever I looked out the window I would see a bunch of students running by all covered in paint or white stuff.  There was lots of laughing, cheering and girls screaming so they were having fun.

Tip called me and asked me to meet her for coffee.  She and Fai were at the coffee shop when I got there.  I had ice cream and watched Fai color.  She had drawn a picture of me.  It’s so funny.  I have a giant afro in the picture!  Yes, my hair is curly and unruly, but this afro was bigger than my head!

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore