I knew this would happen. I would start work and become slack on the whole blog thing. It already happened to Andrew. He now calls this my blog and he makes guest appearances. I wish he’d make more appearances.
Loi Krathong was this Thursday, November 10. It’s a holiday in Thailand held every year on the night of the full moon in November. Loi Krathong celebrations started on Monday at my school with my students learning about Loi Krathong and learning a dance to the song. The dance is beautiful the way the hands are moved so gracefully. The Loi Krathong song is quite catchy I found myself humming it all week then singing it once I found the English version to play for my students during my English lessons.
On Thursday all morning classes were canceled and we spent the morning making krathongs. The krathongs are made from a piece of a banana tree trunk and banana leaves. Once the base is formed the krathong is decorated with three pieces of incense, a candle and flowers. Then money, finger-nail and hair clippings are put in for luck. Before I made my own krathong I helped my students make theirs. I was looking forward to helping them make theirs because from what I heard from experienced foreign teachers, the kids can’t do it themselves, so I was excited to make 24 of them. My Thai co-teacher was great at telling the kids to be very careful with the inch long nails they were using to connect the beautifully folded leaves to the banana tree base of their krathong. And Thai teachers prepped all the leaves the day before because they are hard for little ones to fold. So the students did surprisingly well making their own krathongs, they turned out beautiful, which in Thailand is very important even for four year olds. So I helped by taking unnecessary nails out of the krathongs to save the world instead of making 24 krathongs. I enjoyed making mine later that day though!
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| My students attaching folded banana leaves to the base of their krathongs. |
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| A finished krathong made by a little girl in my class. |
Loi Krathong is a holiday for Thais to send floating (loi) vessels (krathong) to the river goddess to thank her for water and say sorry for using and abusing water. Traditionally the krathongs were made from decomposable products but with the invention of staples and nails the krathongs are often made with those. The students in my class used nails and staples. I made mine at school so mine had staples and nails too but I replaced my nails with wooden toothpicks once I got home. I couldn’t bring myself to put twenty nails in the river for the fish to eat.
Once the sun had set and the full moon was shinning bright in the sky, Andrew and I hoped on the motorbike and drove to the festival. Driving in my excitement heightened as I saw hundreds of lanterns floating in the sky. After walking around the stalls selling food, clothes, toys, krathongs, we found someone selling lanterns. It was fun to let a lantern into the sky. It was a bit scary though. There’s a small window of opportunity to let the lantern go in between it being full of smoke and it getting too hot to hold. We made a wish as we let it go. While these lanterns are cool they are very dangerous. I saw three lanterns get stuck in trees. Luckily, the trees are extremely wet here in rainy, humid Thailand so they did not catch on fire. I also saw a few lanterns fall back down and almost land in the crowd of people. It’s bad luck for your lantern to fall so people try to avoid this. But if you are inexperienced in letting the lantern go this could happen to you. Andrew and I had the help of Thai girls who advised us to lower it to the ground to allow it to fill with smoke.
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| Our wish lantern. |
After the wish lanterns we headed down to the water to set our krathong free. Apparently Loi Krathong could loosely be called the Thai version of Valentine’s day. All the Thai ladies at my school asked me if I’ll put my krathong in the water with my “friend boy”. One lady told me she’s going to sleep instead of to the festival because she doesn’t have a boyfriend. It’s meant to be good luck for couples to bring it to the water together. So we lit the incense and candle, made a wish and placed the krathong in the water. It was very cool to see everyone putting his or her krathong in. Many were holding it up to pray with it first. It was very interesting but very crowded, so crowed as I stood back up I almost caught my hair on fire on a little girl’s candle in her krathong. It wasn’t the first time that night I felt I might catch on fire. I wonder what the injury rate is on this holiday.
The festival also had a beauty pageant complete with girls in beautiful Thai attire and a fireworks show. The fireworks were so beautiful paired with the hundreds of lanterns in the sky. A lady standing next to me saw my big smile during the fireworks show and said something in Thai and the only word I understood was soowai (beautiful), I said ‘chai (yes)’. Loi Krathong was a beautiful holiday and increased my love for living in Thailand. I feel so lucky to get to experience such awesome things. We have no holiday like this in America and not only did I get to go to the festival but I saw how the Thais prepare for the holiday at school.
I love my job! My students are absolutely adorable. One boy picks me a flower everyday on the way back from lunch but he doesn’t pick it right so he shoves a handful of petals into my hand but the thought is so sweet. At first I really wanted to teach kids older than four because four year olds can only be taught so much but these kids are so sweet and cute. Since they are so young I have to try very hard to make my lessons entertaining. I have been spending my plentiful prep time getting creative with how to teach the alphabet, counting, and various English vocabulary words.
It’s a bit of a challenge to have students that I can barely talk to. One day I was trying to ask a student to come back and sit in his chair because he wasn’t finished and (aww so cute) he was so confused he just sat down on the floor where he was standing. After a short chuckle I said no and pointed to the chair. Little confusions like that happen all the time. There’s this one boy who says “yes” to all of my questions in his cute lisp, it’s adorable, but I’m still waiting on the million dollars he promised me. In some ways it’s sad not being able to talk with my students. But it’s also kind of cool because I can’t understand them when they fight or whine. It truly makes my day when the kids talk to me with sentences I taught them. We have been learning weather the last few weeks and the other day one little boy came up to me while we were outside and said “teacher Jenny, it is windy”. I taught him that. :)
It’s awesome to be in a job where I enjoy my students and I have enough prep time to make enjoyable lessons. It shows me that teaching really is a job that’s meant for me. I just hope once I get back to California and teach there that the love doesn’t get lost in all the politics of state testing and one hour per week prep periods. With that being said there are challenges working in Thailand as well. Here beauty is more important than learning. I have to ask my Thai co-teacher to sit down while the kids are working because if I don’t she’ll do their work for them even if it’s coloring the tree on the sunny day picture. I send homework home and it’s obviously done by the parents to make it look like their child is smart, it’s very frustrating. This just shows one difference between the two cultures and the differences in the cultures is why I wanted to live here in the first place!
If you’re interested in Loi Krathong, here’s the awesome song. It’s the English version so you can learn a bit about it too. YOU TUBE LINK: Loi Krathong English Song
