For the last two days (Thursday and Friday), the school has been in camp mode. I knew that this was going to happen, but I think the scale of the camp out shocked me a little. For the two days, about 1000 students were camped out on the school grounds. They were fed, entertained, and supervised by a small number of teachers in the school. The kids seem to have a complete blast, and it gave us time to wander around, get our faces known, chat to a few teachers, and most importantly chat to the students in English. Although I think what we noticed most about the camp was how bizarre and different things are here compared to the strict school structure at home
I don't know whether its because we have a very limited grasp of the language and we simply didn't understand the point of everything, but the last two days were the most confusing I have had so far in this country. Simple things confused us, like the first night the children took part in a candle ceremony. They came into the school hall, lit their candles on the way in from a line of teachers who were holding candles. They then placed the candles in a lovely big bowl of sand with lotus flowers in it, and it looked really beautiful in the dark. But then they all sat down, had a random thing where some of them ran to the top of the group, giggled something into the microphone, then went and got a packet of biscuits, and ran back down to their place in the group. Then it moved onto a chair being placed in the middle of the stage, an Thai English teacher came out dressed in a nice Thai dress, said about 4 words, sat down and people took photos with her like she was a celebrity, and then the children just got up and left.
The next night, we went to a camp fire at the boys camp, where a 50 year old male teacher dressed like a boy scout (they all had uniforms of different sorts depending on what group they worked with) talked into the mike for about half an hour while the children chatted between themselves, only breaking conversation for the odd high pitched 'I see a celebrity' scream. The reason for the scream? Your guess is as good as mine. Then, after the lighting of the fire, there was a quick performance of a Thai wooden xylophone-like instrument (have to say, that was pretty impressive), followed by a period of time where the teachers would say something for a few minutes into the mike, then play a little snippet of music where some of the children would jump up, dance like a cross between a rag doll and a background dancer for Britney for about 20 seconds, and then as quick as lightening jump back down to their sitting position on the ground. Then came the ladyboy show (which is EXTREMELY popular with the young girls, you wouldn't hear this amount of screaming at a Bieber concert) which consisted of 15 year old boys, with incredible legs and the ability to walk in 6 inch heels in a field better than I would on tarmac, strutting around with handbags saying the odd word and enjoying the screams of the fans. All this was done to entertain the teachers, students, and the director of the school, who thought the whole thing was hilarious. Myself and Saadia just spent the whole time looking at each other saying 'do you know what's going on'?
Not finding an answer, we decided to accept the bizarre. If you can't beat them. or in this case understand them, may as well join them.
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