sports day.

Since we started teaching at Benjama, our students have been preparing for “sports day”. Starting at the beginning of June we even had a special schedule, where the classes were 45 minutes long. This was so the students had extra time after school to practice cheering. Yes. Cheering. I think I mentioned this whole cheering ordeal one other time. Every day the students were preparing or practicing for something for sports day. There was so much anticipation and preparation that the students were putting into this day that  we had to go see what was going on. Sports day was held on a Saturday (womp womp), so we really were thinking about skipping it, until Stephan was asked to run in it. We are really bad at coming up with excuses, so we decided to go. Turns out the whole cheering preparation thing was for an actual cheering competition that took place a few days before sports day. UGH that was the whole reason I even thought about going. Anyways, we made it to the stadium for sports day. For some reason I decided to wear running clothes, so our boss quickly asked me if I could run as well. Once we arrived, there were students completely decked out in really elaborate traditional Thai costumes, lots of makeup and crazy hairdos. Some of the students were in other strange costumes.  The majority of the girls had 10 inch heels on as well. Yes, this was sports day. There was a parade where 6 teams walked the track to show off their caked on makeup and platform shoes. Then each team stopped in front of the judges and performed a risque dance to some horrible American pop music. The girls clearly had not practiced yet in their high heels though. They were struggling. Once the performances were over, the teachers from each team went down to the track. There were 8 teachers on each team that were supposed to run. We had to run a relay. Stephan and I were on the yellow team. The rules were to wear the sunglasses, headband, weird tank top, and weird pants. You had to run to the next teammate and pass the clothes, sunglasses and headband to them. It was so goofy. The students loved it. We were winning, thanks to Stephan, but then the last teacher forgot the headband and so we got disqualified. MAN I ran 15 whole meters for nothin’! Well we left after this. So now all I really believe is that sports day is for the students to get really fancy, strut their stuff and then watch the teachers make a fool of themselves. Kind of like hmm prom? in the States. We missed the actual sports part of the day, because it was hot hot hot and we were ready to get away from school stuff. I think the rest of sports day was more like a field day, but instead of winning some ribbons, you probably win a giant gold trophy. And yes, that was sports day. So much hype, preparation, and lack of academics for the first three months of school just for this weird day. So anticlimactic. Welcome to Thailand.

1. Students melting in the heat watching the parade. 

2. Sassy ladies getting their moves on. (being very sporty)

3. Yes, those are trophies. Guess maybe we could have won one, if that teacher didn’t forget to put the mango head band on. 

4. Just some teachers, with great style. That is a cowboy in the middle if you couldn’t tell. 

5. AND the teacher with the best style goes to—STEPHAN—that is what we had to wear for the relay, except the orange tank top didn’t fit over Stephan’s shoulders, so he just wore it around his neck. Orange shades, mango headband, orange tank top, orange pants. That confused the Thais. Why you so big Stephan?