Wai Kru Day and Judging in Chonburi

One month in and I am still adding to the list of the unexpected and inexplicable at any given moment.  On thursday morning we walked to the usual meeting place for the two thousand student assembly carried out with military precision each morning.

Instead of the regular assembly, Thursday was Wai Kru or teacher's day.  All around the country schools celebrate this day with ornamental flowered sculptures that are presented to teachers by students who also kneel before their teachers while photos are taken.  Our school has about five hundred teachers so the ceremony was very lengthy.  After the flower ceremony ended we waited one hour for a line up of Buddhist monks in the striking orange yellow robes to lead some chanting from a raised platform on the stage where they sat cross legged each holding between flattened palms a string that connected them all.

Around lunch time students spontaneously approached teachers with flowers, surrounding them and bowing down to the teacher who bestowed a blessing, or so I could gather.  Some teachers found two students kneeling down beside them and would touch their head and whisper some words.  It was all very touching and a great difference from the more distant respect shown teachers (when they are shown respect) in the west. Suffice to say I didn't have to bless anyone which was well and good, this informal ceremony was between the beloved and well-known Thai teachers and some of their most adoring students.

Towards the end of the unusual day I was told that I would be leaving at 5:30 the next morning to Chonburi, a town about 200 km away to be a judge at a contest some of the students were entered in.

It was very last minute. I had helped a student prepare three speeches that week. One on Science and Technology, one on language and the third on education and career.  She did very well under the circumstances and I hope I was able to help her instead of overwhelming her with my ideas about inserting a quote from the astronaut Chris Hadfield into the technology speech.

At the school in Chonburi I met a great number of other foreign English teachers!  One by the name of Don who, being originally from Lake Tahoe, was very open about his past experiences. I think we were all a little desperate to talk without a language barrier, although the Thai English teachers I met there were also refreshingly easy to talk to.  Don had a music store in California that Robin Williams and Alicia Silverstone dropped into from time to time.  Then he was a fisherman in Alaska.  Talking to someone who had been to Vancouver and sailed the waters around B.C. made me feel like I was home again for a little while. He retired in Thailand, got bored and started teaching three years ago. Most of the English Teachers I met had been in the country for more than three years. I was the freshest by far.  It was encouraging to meet others who had made this their home away from home.  Most of them were guys in their thirties but then I met Tracy.  A tall brown haired Albertan from Medicine Hat who had taught in Korea for twelve years and was living close to my school!

She extended an invitation to me to visit her school if I was in the area and we both shared an immediate excitement to meet another Canadian, and one from Western Canada at that.

I judged five students who individually gave a five minute speech on one of the three topics.  The one who won had studied in South Africa and probably had an unfair advantage, but it was inspiring to see these young teenagers go up in front of us judges and speak in a foreign language about education or technology or language.

Amazingly one of the contestants had studied in Vancouver and another was on her way to live there.  If I have done anything hard in my life it must be nothing compared to the sacrifice these few lucky students have when they leave their families to learn English.

I was given a free lunch and felt very much like a professional throughout the day. A welcome change from working in the checkout in Victoria feeling the weight of a very unusable (there) degree and the lingering student loan or kick-in-the-pants that got me there.