4th of July, Thai-Style (A month late)

so steph, katie, and i decided that a great way to introduce our kids to american culture was to celebrate the 4th of july with them. and what is the best way to celebrate the 4th of july in thailand, you ask? by having our kids make silly newspaper hats, teaching them "yankee doodle", and feeding them lay's potato chips, oreos, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. nothing says america like trans fat. and yes, interestingly enough, i can get lay's and oreos here, as well as kit kats and raisin bran and skippy peanut butter and various other american foods.

anyway, 4th of july fell on a wednesday this year, and i only teach 3 classes on wednesdays - kindergarten and 5/1. there was literally no hope in trying to explain the 4th of july to 5 year olds who don't speak english, so the 4th of july celebration only took place in 5/1. 5/1 is my favorite class because i see them 7 hours a week and they are so smart and sweet. they are also my smallest class (other than kindergarten) at 32 students. i took pictures of them in their paper hats.









and here is a photo of the whole class. this is in the 5/1 classroom. note the picture of the king above the blackboard. they are crazy about the king here and his picture is everywhere. also note that i taught them about new jersey, as you can see from what i've written on the blackboard, because there is no way anyone can learn about america without learning about new jersey.



and here is a horrible picture of me, but it's with the class, so i thought it would be cute to post.



and later that night, in grownup land, we celebrated 4th of july with beer, corn, and baked beans. and we celebrated with other americans! much to our surprise, despite the stares we draw everywhere we go and the cries of "farang! farang!" (thai word for foreigner) we hear everywhere we go, we are not the only white people in nan. there are about 10-15 foreign teachers here, as steph and katie found out by following a white guy around until he sat down and then pouncing on him for information. he was kind enough to pass their phone numbers to some other americans, and they came over for fourth of july. unfortunately, with only our small bathroom sinks and a rice cooker full of baked bean remnants, clean up required a bit of creative thinking. here's steph demonstrating an alternate use of the bidet hose thing in our bathrooms (thais don't use toilet paper).



however, the clean up was worth it because we had a great time, and our new friends invited us out that friday. turns out the cool thing for foreigners to do on friday nights is go to a bar called verrachun, where they play live music. we met some more people, checked out the entire night scene in nan (3 bars), and finished up the night at some sketchy, sketchy discotheque where i danced with a ladyboy. our new friends also knew a guy who lives with a thai woman, owns his own glass-blowing business, and has potluck barbecues at his house almost every saturday with the farang in nan. turns out he also has a ping pong table and a pool table and that his girlfriend is a delicious cook. we had a fun night, and there started our social life in nan. we now have a community of people to hang out with and a place to go on friday and saturday nights.