(no subject)

Nov 12, 2004 17:12

on wednesday night i was eating dinner with a german girl at this restaurant/bar when about ten drunk thai girls at the table next to us invited us to sit with them and poured us glass after glass of rice whiskey. after about an hour of attempts to socialize despite the language barrier, i hear "teacher, teacher! you teach my son! phimai wittaya school teacher! you sing a song!!!" and this middle aged man is pointing and yelling at me and the girls are dragging me up to the stage and wouldn't let me sit down until i sang the beatles' "yesterday" on the microphone to about 50 people (i made the german girl sing with me) while the guitarist played along. sometimes i wish i could be anonymous even just for five minutes here.

this weekend is the annual phimai festival with boat races, 8 million markets, and sound/light shows along with dance-drama performances of phimai's history at the 3000 year old temple ruins in the center of town. the show last night was spectacular - hundreds of the high school students dressed in wonderful, traditional thai costume doing these incredible elaborate dances (barefoot) while lantern-balloons were released (releasing negative energy with them according to buddhist belief) and fireworks went off. i can't even describe how beautiful this was.

today my students were so bad and then they gave me keychains and magazine cutouts of motorcycles as gifts and sang "we will rock you" and banged on their desks. how can i possibly hate them when they are so darned sweet sometimes?

here is a picture from phimai's first (ever?) halloween party. pumpkins? nope. jack-o-watermelons.


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