As I said before, in addition to the trainings we sit through we spend our Saturdays in an organized Thai cultural activity. This past Saturday was Thai Sports Day.
This day entailed us being divided into 6 teams of different colors. Each team had to create a cheer incorporating Thai and English. After, each team played one short game of chairball, dtaw graw and a game similar to bocci ball.
Now you are probably wondering what chairball and dtaw graw are. Chairball is like a mix of basketball and ultimate frisbee. One person is standing on a chair or stool holding a basket at either end of the court. The 5 other players on the catcher’s (holder’s) team tries to get the ball in the basket, but there is no dribbling or ball bouncing aloud. And when you have the ball you can’t move. Oh, there is also a person from the opposing team defending the basket and there is like a three point line that the defender is inside of that the other players are not aloud in. It was pretty fun.
Dtaw graw is like a combination of volleyball and soccer. There are three people for each team on the court. Each team is trying to get the ball over a net using any body part except the arms. Each team is allowed three touches to get it over the net. Kind of fun but also really difficult since I’m not used to using my body in that way.
After the three sports there was a relay race with a 4 legged race, hitting a tiny eggplant with a larger eggplant tied around the person waist, feeding a person a banana when both are blindfolded, picking up and passing off a ping pong ball with chopsticks and finally hitting a box while blindfolded. This was all ridiculous.
Later, we went to a production of the Episode of Hanuman. It was very long and the air conditioning in the theater was cranked way up. But the production was beautiful, even though I couldn’t understand what was going on.
In short, things are very exciting here in Thailand.