Building the Krathong

Carving carrot flowers

Folding banana leaves

Close up! Banana leaves, flowers, and long beans

The Contests

The Language students' Krathong

The white elephant Krathong...
He's so cute I want one!

Beauty contestants!

Waiting for to preform in the show

Talents!

Playing the Saw Duang

The students started screaming as soon as she did this!

At the River

View of the pier

Group shots!

Another boat out on the river

Careful!

And it's off...

to join it's smaller friends!

Ready...set...go!

Going...going...

Gone!

Or not :(

From the middle of the river

Silly students...and another lantern stuck in a tree!

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Last night was Loy Krathong, which is called the festival of lights for a good reason. The river was peppered with the light from the Krathongs (the banana leave boats) and the sky was full of moving 'stars' and a large bright moon. Occasionally the trees were also a light from when a floating lantern got stuck on its way up to the sky.

Even though this was my third Loy Krathong festival I still had a blast and had a strikingly different experience from the past two years. My first festival I watched the student beauty contest and then went to the river at midnight with a handful of students and one of the teachers. Last year, I watched half of the beauty contest and then went to the river with some of the students and hung out there until midnight.

This year, I started by watching some of the Language students build their giant Krathong for the contest. Then I went to the student meeting hall to watch the student Miss Loy Krathong beauty contest. They introduced all of the girls and then the first round began. To narrow the group down from 26 to 10 they did a ‘popularity’ contest. The 10 girls who received the most hearts flowers by the audience continued to the next round. I was planning to leave after getting some pictures of the girls but one of the girls who had continued on said I HAD to stay.

Both girls from the Language major continued on to the talent portion. I missed the first girls’ performance but the second played a song on the Saw Duang, which is a two stringed instrument. Watching her play was fascinating…it is amazing to listen to the amount of music that can come out of an instrument with only two strings.

After the performances there was a break where they announced the winners for the Krathong contest. The Language students won third place and the white elephant krathong won first place. For the beauty contest the Language girl who played the Saw Duang won second place.

After the contest I went with a group of the first year Language students into town to the main river. We took a slightly terrifying long tailed boat ride out to the middle of the river to release the krathong they built. Then we met up with some more students on the pier and they decided that they wanted to go on another boat ride around exercise island (a small island in the middle of the river). During the boat ride we watched the floating lanterns being released and dance across the sky. After the second boat ride where we almost flipped the boat getting off we walked along the stands and ate some snacks before we bought a lantern and set it free.

I had a fantastic night with the students laughing and joking around. All I have to say is thank god I don’t have classes on Friday since we didn’t get home until almost 1:30am :S Pictures will be in the next post there were too many to cram into this one.

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A fairytale by Japan, Mameaw, and Tittee:

Once upon a time in the far away land. There have a little home in the forest. It’s a witch’s house. She is evil she is ugly. Her name is Coverly.

She had long white hair. She hate childrend. If she found any childrend she turned them to mice.

One day when she read a magic book and she try to spell it but she spell it wrong. There was a big bom and the witch turn to nothing.

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(Joe)

Last week, I went to Amazon. I saw anaconda

(Kap)

The anaconda was bog and wild.

(joke)

“Oh! It’s dangerous”

(Tiw)

The anaconda wanted to eat me.

(Peace)

“Wow! The anaconda is dangerous for you.”

(Gong)

“I love it!”

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During the first week of classes I gave my students an activity to do in class. They had to write stories in a group. Each person began their own story with 1-2 sentences and then passed it to the next person who added another 1-2 sentences. They seemed to have a lot of fun with the activity and some of them even came up with some very creative stories. I will be uploading a few of my favorite stories over the next few days starting with a two stories from Mimmim, Nut and, Tong. (I have left the stories exactly as they were written…lots of spelling and grammar mistakes).

Story 1:

(Mimmim)

Once upon a time at Rose garden have one beautiful Princess she name is Mimmin who is so pretty girl, everyone call she is Rose Princess. Animal in Rose garden all love her becus she love and care its.

(Nut)

She have a couple name is nice, he so ugly and very fat but Mimmim so love him, a lot becus he make a magic with her.

(Tong)

And one night mimmim Princess and her Prince married and kiss. One year later, mimmim Princess have one son and one daughter. Children is lovely and smart. Everyone so happy very much.

(Nut)

In the morning when she waked. It’s just a dream becuz she crazy.

Story 2 :

(Tong)

Once upon a time at cabin have a milkmaid. She is hard and free. She have son and daughter, we are happy family.

(Nut)

Once a night have a ugly demon come to her cabin, it want to eat her cow. So milkmaid can kill it becuz she is a wondergirl

(Mimmim)

After she killed, Her neighbor call she is Heroine of village.

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I know everyone has been hearing about the flooding in Thailand on the news. The floods are in the Northern part of Thailand (here's a map of the affected areas). The only affects to the Southern part of the country has been a disruption in transportation through Bangkok by train and bus. Deliveries to stores have also been slowed since most of the distribution centers are located in the north. Deliveries have not been stopped but there is a noticeable lack of popular products in stores.

So don't worry about me I'm not being swept away by the flood waters!

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So because of the massive floods in Northern Thailand I did not go to Suhkothai over the school break, like I had originally planned. Instead I stayed in Surat for most of the break. But, everything happens for a reason and because I stayed here I was able to meet Suzanne and go on a couple day trips with her over the long weekend. She was given use of her comapany's car for the weekend so the rain didn't stop us from exploring. With the help of the car and Suzanne's GPS (that mostly worked) we were able to have a very active weekend before the semester started up again.

The car!

Suzanne driving!

Driving out of town :)

The highway!

We started on Saturday with a day trip down to Khanom. We wanted to go to the beach...that plan was thwarted by the wind, rain, and nasty riptides. We walked on the beach for a bit, between rain showers, and then decided to try exploring a bit. First we stopped at a little temple which was slightly run down (I don't remember the name of it).

The beach :)

Temple number 1!

Then we decided to head to the nearby city Nakhon Si Thammarat. Once we got there we navigated through the awful traffic to Wat Phra Mahathat, which is one of the oldest temples in Southern Thailand. The temple was huge, compared to most of the temples in Southern Thailand. The main chedi, which we didn't get to walk around, was built year 12 and is on the back of the 1/4 baht coin (25 satang). The the actual temple was built in 1628 and houses a huge seated Buddha.

The Chedi

The temple

The stair railings for the temple

The Buddha

After walking around the temple grounds we discovered that we hadn't turned the headlights off...so the car was dead :( Luckily, the first person who stopped was able to give us a jump so we were quickly on our way home. On the way home we spotted a temple that was all lit up and seemed to be having a carnival of some sort. We did a U-turn and meandered through the stalls for a while.

The temple all lit up!

Strings on money in front of the temple

Cute kids on the carnival rides

Making some snack foods!

On Sunday, we had another adventure. We went to Ao Nang beach, Krabi for an overnight trip. We arrived right around dinner time, since we took off in the afternoon. We chowed down on some pizza, which was super cheap because it's low season for tourist in Krabi. Then we walked around and shopped for awhile before heading back to our room.

The Beach :)

Yummy Pizza!

Sunset from the pizza shop

Sunset on the left, rain clouds on the right!

On Monday, we spent most of the day relaxing in the shade at the beach and playing in the water. Before we left we had a fantastic lunch of amazing Indian food, again super discounted. On the way home we stopped at a reclining Buddha tucked away on the side of the highway and almost got lost in Krabi cause the GPS couldn't pick up a signal for a while.

And Jump!!!
(Thank god my camera has auto-shutter! We watched one girl
jump about 8 times before her boyfriend got the right shot)

Buddha on the side of the road

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