Wai Kru

At the beginning of each school year, all schools in Thailand celebrate Wai Kru, a day for students to honor and pay respect to their teachers.  We celebrated it this past week.  The day before, the students spent many hours making elaborate floral designs with jasmine, banana leaves, marigold, and other foliage.  The intricacy of these designs is incredibly impressive and requires a great deal of work.  Every single class, there are about 13 in each grade, make both a male and female piece.  The male piece always includes incense and candles somewhere in the design, while the females contains more rounded egg shapes.  

The day of, both students and teachers gathered in the central quad.  All the teachers of each grade sat in a line at the front of the students.  Some songs were played and a boy and girl from each class presented the floral pieces to the director.  Once that was done, the students would come one by one and offer some sort of smaller flower token and then wai at our feet.  As they did this, the teachers would pat the students on the head, which symbolized the importance of this ceremony, for Thais don't usually touch each other on the head (considered disrespectful in Buddhism).  As corny as it sounds, I definitely felt emotion as each student payed respect.  The M1's are just so little and sweet and I promptly forgot about all their naughty classroom antics.  The simple act of taking time to pay respect was very powerful and an act that I believe should be practiced more in day to day life.  

Once all the students had finished, everyone milled about, talking and taking photos, and various classes would make special efforts to pay respect to their favorite teachers by encircling said teacher.  All the faculty and staff had their photos taken as well.  Many teachers and students were crying.  It was quite an event. 

In the afternoon, the students welcomed the M1's to the school with a variety of activities including crawling through an obstacle course, dancing, singing and goofy games.  There was much face painting and water squirting and everyone was pretty dirty by the end.  During these festivities, Shelby and I walked around saying hello to all the students.  I felt such love for my little M1's, they looked so confused and vulnerable and tiny during all the activities and all I wanted to do was give them a big hug.  All in all, it was a very fun day, and gave the foreign teachers time to hang out and bond a bit more with the students.