Sports Day in all its glory

I don't even know how to go about doing this post, but I will do my best.  So Sports Day.  I would say to think back to the events of Science Day, but it appears that I never got around to doing a post about that (To Do List: The Flood, Science Day, Vacation with Andrew).  One thing you should understand about Thailand is that it is always about the pageantry.  You have seen how this applies to daily life in school (saying that something is very important and then completely disregarding it), but events like Science Day, the Candle Parade, and Sports Day give everyone a legitimate outlet for the pageantry. This gives the kids (and adults too, let's not kid ourselves) the chance to go completely overboard for a few days.  This includes dressing up, music, dancing, singing.  The sports?  They are a sideshow.  The main events are the costumes, the dances, the cheers.  That is all people really care about.

Which is actually kind of fun.  To be honest, at first I was not terribly excited about Sports Day--it was raining, I was tired from my trip around Thailand with Andrew, and the prospect of just sitting around all day was not enticing.  Little did I know what an event it would be!  I had been told that it would pale in comparison to the Candle Parade (not sure I would agree with that statement, but it is definitely different).  All I can say is that it was a spectacle in the truest sense.

I began the day by peeking out my door at all of the students in their costumes.  They would walk the 2 km from our school to the Nan Stadium, a parade made a little less grand by the fact that it was raining.  In fact, I had been sure all morning that the day would be cancelled, but the show must go on, as they say!  The students certainly didn't let the weather dampen their spirits--despite the dreary weather and the delayed start to the day, they all came out in their finest (costume?) attire.  It was a bit bewildering at first to see them all, it was such a strange array of outfits. Gone were the traditional Thai costumes of the Candle Parade.  In their place?  Well, just about everything you can think of, and many that you can't.

So all the kids were sorted into their color groups for the parade (the same 8 groups as the Candle Parade).  I saw some of them preparing near school, but most of the others I didn't get to see until we arrived at the stadium. I went over there with Pee Neat and then just waited for the first groups to arrive.

Back at school.  Looks a little bit like the Candle Parade?

This...not so much like the Candle Parade!

More ridiculous outfits arrive at school

The stadium itself was a bit of a surprise--you go down a random road on the outskirts of Nan and actually head down a dirt road for part of it.  Then voila!  You find yourself at a beautiful track.  I mean a lovely 8 lane rubber track.  The thing is brand new (parts of the stadium still have plastic wrap on them, I am not even joking).  Anyway, there is also a sketchy municipal gym and swimming pool, but the track and bleachers were pretty awesome.  So the students paraded from our school to the stadium, at which point each color group did a brief dance presentation.  This received a grade, which would be combined with a grade they received later in the day for a 10-15 minuted dance presentation.  It was quite fun to see them all arrive in their costumes.  I will say that many shoes came off as soon as they were in sight of the stadium--the heels were HUGE!  Take a look in some of the pictures.

English Department in the stands

The Gold team

Pink team

The marching band arrives!

One of the interesting things for me was the marching band.  See, I have band practice every morning directly outside of my window.  I mean about 3 meters outside my window.  Yeah, that close.  On the plus side, it serves as a wake-up call.  But just about everything else about it is a downside.  Most notably: they are terrible.  No, not even just "bad," I mean horrendously, awfully, claw-your-ears-off-your-head-so-the-pain-will-stop kind of bad.  Yeah.  That bad.  Andrew will back me up on this one.  So imagine my surprise when the marching band showed up at the stadium and was actually good.  I mean wow.  What a shocker!  I can only conclude that the people who practice outside my window are the beginner band students.  Or possibly the ones who were dropped on their heads as infants.  Or quite possibly some combination of the two.

In the first part of that video you could see another interesting part of the day--the cheering gloves.  They were double sided, with a different color on each side.  This meant that the students could do different hand movements to make a pattern as a group.  Pretty fun to watch!  It was actually the orange team that won the competition at the end, largely because they had a group of these students in gloves working with the dancers to put on a pretty elaborate show.

But I have talked enough for now.  Without further ado, here are the costumes!

Maybe we have a mascot?

Oh, the shoes

My favorite little lady boys!

The judging panel hard at work

They fell behind...the gym teacher "motivated" them to catch up

A speech from our director

Our own "Olympic torch"

More lovely lady boys

After the parade to the stadium and the mini dance performance upon arrival, there was a bit of an intermission from the dancing/cheering.  Or at least the official cheering.  It was at this point that most of the sporting events occurred.  However, throughout the afternoon there would be (what appeared to be) impromptu dance performances on the field, and fairly official looking cheers coming from the students sitting in the bleachers.  Let me just say this: the Thais really love to cheer!  It was pretty fun.  Anyway, late in the afternoon we finally got to the most anticipated part of the day: the formal dance competitions.  These were about 10-15 minutes long, and they really varied from team to team.  I wish I had some better footage of it, but my camera was almost out of batteries (and did in fact die while recording these), so what you see is what you get.  Enjoy!

This one was a bit of a scandalous performance.  There were (at minimum) 4 times that Pee Neat turned to me and said "Oh, they will be in the Discipline Room tomorrow!" So I know I haven't talked much about the sports, and to be honest there isn't much to say.  All together, Sports Day was actually 3 days.  The first 2 days were just sporting competitions (basketball, soccer, etc.).  We didn't have to come to school for those.  The 3rd day had the parade, costumes, and dancing/cheer competitions.  Additionally, it had the track events.  But by track events, it had about 1 race per grade level--not much to talk about.  There was, however, a relay race for teachers!  It was an 8x50 race, meaning that each team had 8 people running 50 meters each, totally 1 lap around the track.  It was supposed to be in your color group, so I signed up for purple.  Well, nobody else signed up for purple, so I ended up on the gold team.  There also weren't even enough people to field full relay teams, so it ended up being 4 teachers and 4 students to each team.  Well, we go down to the start line, and magically a team of 8 teachers (from purple) appear...WHAT????  Oh well, I am on gold now.  So I stick with it.  Originally I was set to be 1st leg, but then they switched me to 7th.  Not really my preference, but whatever.  Our "baton" was a stick with a balloon taped to it.  Let me just say that deteriorated quickly, balloons flying everywhere!  It was all good fun though--I got my baton, ran my excruciatingly long 50 meters, and almost killed Ping Pong because I was in an all out sprint and he didn't start running until I was on top of him.  I guess all those years of relay hand-offs did teach me something that other people don't really know after all!  Funny thing, we got 4th, purple team got 1st--jerks :P  Anyway, it was really fun to be on a track again.  I did sprint warm-ups and everything.  Kind of made me miss it all.

Anyway, it was quite a fun day, from the almost complete lack of actual "sports" to the truly excessive pageantry.  But everyone really enjoyed it--this is most definitely the Thai idea of fun.  And I really liked getting to participate as well.  I hope you could get some sense of it all through the photos.  Last but not least, I will leave you with the same video that was in the previous blog post: my little lady boys strutting their stuff.  They are too hilarious not to show again, so I will let you giggle at them a bit more!

P.S. Sorry about the audio quality on the videos.  But if the video quality is bad, try to adjust the settings on YouTube, they actually aren't terrible!