In the past week our school has celebrated two holidays, Children's Day and Teacher's Day. After seeing both of them, I have decided it is probably better to be a child in Thailand than it is to be a teacher.
Children's day was a full day of unorganized do whatever you want and eat a lot of free food. The whole campus was left open and kids just wandered around and did as they pleased for the day. Not a single planned event or activity, other than the opening of the day which included the usual flag raising and prayer with an added on bonus of feeding the monks.
Teacher's day, by contrast, was long and boring. We still had to go do to school (the students had the day off). We were instructed to be there a 8 am... sharp. Well, of course, nothing of significance happened until just after 9. Then it was 2 and a half hours of prayer and speeches that I didn't understand. Of course, we were given seats of honor in the front row with the Nong Chang officials so everyone was watching and could not if were weren't paying due attention. Unfortunately, they didn't think to put someone next to us who could speak English well enough to give us some idea of what was going on.
After the speeches, prayers, and awards were passed out (none of which I understood) we had lunch. Then, in the afternoon, were sports games where teachers from the school competed against each other. In the beginning of the day we had agreed to participate, thinking it would be a fun, un-competitive and friendly game.
As the afternoon progressed, we watched about 8 games (2.5 hours) before we got to play ourselves. As each game passed I said to Anno, "They're taking this pretty seriously." No smiles, lots of strategic huddles, and what seemed to be the very best players from each school. All for volleyball.
Well, we waited nonetheless, even though we could have gone home as early as 11:00... and finally our time came. We went in there, not really knowing the rules or having any experience with the game to speak of, and began our pre-game warm up. It was at this point that I got blindsided square in the face with a very hard volleyball. For some reason, it hit me just right that it didn't do any damage or even really hurt all that much, but it certainly surprised the hell out of me and disoriented me for a few minutes.
When I finally got my bearings, Anno was laughing so hard he was crying (which continued the rest of the day whenever he looked at me) and apparently the person who had thrown/hit the ball had gone into hiding. I was fine, and everything continued as normal.
So, after waiting for hours and sustaining head injuries, we got kicked off the team within two minutes. Neither Anno nor I knew what to do, and what we were expecting to be a friendly slow passed game was a fierce competition. 3 points into it they stopped us and told us to leave...
Well, I thought. Well indeed.
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3 comments:
I like this blog because it gives me some insight into how aggressions are released in a very repressed, structured society. They have a time and a place for everything. One can safely vent ones frustrations by slamming ones opponent in the face during periodically allowed sports days. Ah -- live and learn -- a westerner wouldn't necessarily know this, since we vent our frustrations as we go, on a "need to vent" basis. Michael -- chalk it all up to experience and try to keep your fantastic sense of humor in tact! You could be one heck-of-an ESOL teacher (with incredible first hand empathy) when you come back to the good old US of A. -- Judy :-)
Well, actually, it was a complete accident, I wasn't paying attention in the middle of a warm up session, and I should have been. Actually, I have never seen any aggression, or even an argument or tension, arise during a sports game (between children or adults). Something I can't say for even a single 15 minute recess session in the states.
Ooohhh, okay. Mea culpa! I do tend to look at situations through the western culture in which I grew up. But, but...the culprit didn't stay and say, "scuzi" (or bow) and Anno laughed all day long. Through my western-conditioned thoughts, it just seems like a little bit of misplaced aggression. (I'm glad you weren't hurt! Years ago, I took an errant tennis ball in the ear and have had tinnitus ever since. That was an accident, too, -- the ball had glanced off the edge of the racquet of the player two courts away.)
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