Why who? Wai Kru!

So here in Thailand, there is a tradition of giving homage to teachers at the start of every year. The students and some of their parents come to honor their teachers in a ceremony. Today, I was a part of this tradition. Let me walk you through it.

So, one of the benefits of working in a i-lingual school is that we have Thai teachers who teach 2 blocks of our day (which provides for awesome prep time!). Our Thai teachers were the ones to prepare the students with instructions for what they need to do. The only thing I had to do was show up to the ceremony. Sweet!

In an effort to be merciful, the grades were broken up into chunks, so no one would have to sit through the honoring of the entire teaching staff (except for the ladies leading it, of course). My class went in with the rest of the elementary grades (1-6) and all of the students were seated into rows by grade. After the welcoming speeches, the teachers went up on the stage to sit in a semi-circle with 3 chairs in the front center. After some more commentary (in Thai), two teachers went up at a time to sit on either side of Ajan Seurat, the school's founder. A boy and a girl from each class would come up and present flowers to the teachers, literally placing flowers at their feet and bowing their heads. It was a bit awkward, but only because it was unfamiliar. In context, it wasn't nearly as ridiculous as it would have been if it had happened in the States. After the class representatives paid their respects, they stepped down and then the rest of the class approached with their flowers. This cycled through for all of the grade levels. It actually only took about an hour, and most of it was in the beginning speeches.

At the end of the ceremony, the teachers bring all of their flowers back to their classrooms. I was told to take a few to freshen up my apartment, but to leave the rest of them in the room. One of my girls, Plai, was completely enraptured with a particular flower in her bouquet, so I gave her one of the flowers. It was adorable. So my room now has a table filled with flowers. I'm not sure how long I'm supposed to keep the flowers, but I guess they'll stay until they start to wilt. I'll say this for them, though: they are beautiful and they smell wonderful. I could really get used to being a teacher here. ;)