I was all excited for this week because we had known in advance that Thursday was a holiday, Buddha's Birthday, and we didn't have school. Initially I was disappointed that the holiday wasn't on a Friday (who doesn't want long weekends), but I got over it quickly after arriving at school on Monday morning and hearing some more good news. I was told that on Tuesday there would be no classes for "Sports Day", and Wednesday there would be no classes for "Music Day". That's right, the four day work week turned into a 2 day party(or a three class week for me) in just a few, short, glorious, moments of casual conversation with another teacher.
Tuesday was a beautiful day spent watching kids play the "wave game", soccer, basketball, foot-volley ball, "snatch the hat Game", and "nonsense quiz game". What does all that mean? Well, it means I came to school, put on mesh shorts, and then went outside in the sun all day doing nothing but eating, drinking, and laughing. Oh yeah, and there was also a "teachers vs students" basketball game that I was recruited for. That was quite interesting because every time I touched the ball the entire school was screaming "DUNK IT!!!".
Sadly, I only furthered along the stereotype that, in fact, white man can not jump. But I didn't even play my best either because I was so confused. I figured we would murder the students because some days I stay after school and play with them, and there has never been a close game, but playing with other teachers really threw off my game. 
Why, you might ask? Well can you picture little children around the age of 5 playing soccer? What do you see? All of them following the ball, from one spot to the next, well that's how the teachers team plays defense during basketball. It was like I was surrounded by four chickens with their heads cut off. The long and short of it was that we ended up winning, despite my lackluster performance, by one basket...which just happened to be my basket in the final seconds. Haha, so lame, but so true.
Wednesday wasn't even a full day. I got to school and went into the gym to watch kids perform Karaoke for a couple hours, and then I went home. It was that easy. In at 8 and out at 11 with some good singing, bad singing, hilarious singing, stand up comedy and magic in the middle. I'm not sure I've ever felt more like I was in the middle of a tv sitcom, but it was definitely something I enjoyed seeing. I really need to get some video of this for you in the future. It was a definite MUST SEE!
And all of these cool events were basically a surprise to me. I never really know about anything in advance here. It's as if everyone just expects us to know things, but we don't, and then at the last second they say things like "yeah, there is a tv studio on the fifth floor. Didn't you know that?". No one did say that to me because no one has a high enough level of English to put a sentence like that together, but I thought it to myself on Wednesday after the Karaoke.
The Karaoke performances were being recorded by students, so when it was over I followed them to see who got the tapes. They led me to the "Internet Broadcasting Room". It is basically a small tv studio; lights, cameras, computers, tape decks, tripods, and even a blue screen. A FRICKEN BLUE SCREEN. This is a perfect example of people not sharing things with us foreigners. Everyone knows I was a film major, but no one mentioned the fact that the school has film supplies gathering dust. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this new found discovery, but I hope to take advantage of it during my time here, and hopefully my faithful readers (you) will get a few more video's to watch because of it.
I'm sorry I slacked off a little on my posting. I was sick for about a week, but now I'm as happy to be healthy as this kid was happy the race was over. Rejoice.
No comments:
Post a Comment