Sports Day!

Dec 29

The last two days have been a bit out of the ordinary. On Monday, I was told by the CCD people that me and Carina would be going to a university on Wednesday to speak about our volunteering experience in Thailand. It was supposed to be for an hour and we had to have a computer presentation. This made for some quick last minute work as I finished mine Tuesday night about midnight or so. The next morning we’re being driven away in a van about an hour north of the city where we were speaking. I was planning on spending some time during my talk explaining what CCD does, but right before I was to speak one of the staff with us took some time to explain CCD to the students. Some last minute changes made for a rough talk, but at least some of the students were interested. Afterwards they demonstrated some games for us that the different regions of Thailand would play and invited us to join. They also had some Thai dance done by some of the Art students that we were able to see while we were there. Altogether it was a good day and it was definitely great to talk with some of the students there.
Today was sports day at the government homes. I can’t really explain well what all took place in such a short space, but there were all kinds of people dressed up, cheerleaders, majorettes, an important lady sitting on a leather couch, banners, and a spectacular opening ceremony. The ceremony concluded with them releasing a banner into the air, which unfortunately was a little heavier than they calculated because the balloons holding it up we only strong enough to float it across the field at eye level into the trees rather than spectaculously up into the sky and out of sight. The games consisted of eating contests, potato sack races, egg tosses, water balloon toss, etc. Not really the sports I was excited about, but it was still a lot of fun for us and the children who were all divided into separate teams with us. I was supposed to wear a white suit for the opening ceremony, but surprisingly, I had left that out on my packing list for coming to Thailand. I did wear the tennis shoes I brought, which marks the first time I have worn socks since coming here.