A perfect example...

Sometimes it's easy to forget that you are in a foreign country and working in a foreign education system...then you have a day like last Tuesday.

Morning assembly at school (which happens every morning) started 15 minutes late for no apparent reason (the students are called to assembly by a series of 4 songs so maybe someone just forgot to hit play). This week was midterms so only half the students were there. This meant no marching band, which normally plays the national anthem. So the students dirged through the national song acapella and at several different tempos. They could have really used a conductor :)

After assembly, all of m.4 (10th graders) had to line up for hair inspection. At school, all boys must have close-cropped hair and girls are allowed to have long hair only m.4-6 unless they are in Thai dance club. There must be some rule about long bangs though because that seemed to be the focus of the inspection. A male teacher had each student pass and if their hair was too long (as most of the boys were) he would reach over and cut a chunk with a pair of scissors. The boys seemed to take it pretty good-naturedly but I saw a girl with a look of terror when the teacher was threatening her bangs. Thai students are pretty obsessed with their appearances and spend a lot of time (sometimes even class time...grrrr) in front of the mirror. By the end of the inspection, the basketball court was littered with chunks of hair and many of my m.4 boys looked like orphans or 5 year olds who discovered scissors and just went for it.

Later, I happened to walk by the front gate of the school where one of the P.E. teachers was caning boys' behinds. I looked quizzically at my host teacher and he explained they had missed classes and were being bad. He also chimed in that they looked much too happy while they were supposed to be getting punished (jumping around grabbing their bums laughing). He said that hitting them was necessary so they did not misbehave...I told him at home we don't hit students and yes, they misbehave, but they do here in Thailand too. He just shrugged his shoulders and ended the conversation.

Then, we were off to this 6-star resort/elephant camp where the rotary group from Tasmania, Australia (that my school director's rotary is hosting) was spending the morning. I didn't have classes because it was midterms and my questions were just included on the Thai teachers' tests.
We arrived at the gorgeous resort and got to see the 7 month old baby elephant and a woman spinning silk from silk worms. I even got to keep a silk worm in its cocoon as a souvenir (which horrified my friend Misa when I discovered it in my pocket the next day and told her I was waiting for it to hatch). Then the school director beckoned me to this giant platform and I hopped on an elephant and away we went!

Only in Thailand! What a life!