a celebration.

Yep, another celebration. They really like to party here!

There’s a rather large contingent of Chinese here in Thailand (about 15% of the population) and lunar new year is a big deal. Actually, I think lunar new year is the more pc term we’ve had to adopt in the US but here it’s not necessary to differentiate, they just call it Chinese New Year. The Thais celebrate their own new year in April, Songkran, their biggest festival, and one that I’m going to miss by a couple of weeks,

darnit! But, never ones to pass on a celebration, the whole city turned out for the Chinese New Year festivities that stretched over these past couple of weekends. There was a huge streetmarket, of course, with tons of food and stalls for shopping. There were fireworks and dances, booths for painting and crafts, places to give offerings to the monks and places to take photos just to name a few.

And it's never a bad idea to start fresh. So, if you've messed up on your other new year's resolutions already (who me?!) here's your chance to try again!

a festive weekend.

This past weekend my city, Udon Thani, celebrated its 121^st birthday. Since the Thai’s look for any opportunity, large or small, to throw a party this was the perfect opportunity to dance, set off some fireworks, set up a festival and disrupt traffic.

Saturday morning I went with a couple of my coworkers to watch a couple of the other girls participate in a huge Thai dance. They had women from many of the surrounding cities (Udon Thani is the name of the province as well as the name of the city which is the capital—like counties and the county seat) gather together in the street to perform traditional Thai dances in an effort to set a world’s record.  People were there from the Guinness World Records to witness the event.  They’d anticipated just over 5,000 participating but the rumors were they ended up with over 20,000.  It was beautiful madness. The streets were a sea of orange.

We have three large traffic circles in Udon; one with a clock tower, one with a fountain and one with a statue of Prince Prajak (25^th son of King Rama IV, born back in 1865.) The event took place in the five streets feeding into the statue circle, orange spilling out in all directions like spokes from a wheel.  It was quite an impressive sight.

Later that night there was a fun street market filled with food and wares of all sorts.  One of the girls I’m here with decided that she would try her luck at panhandling. People here are fascinated with ‘farangs’ (foreigners) and will constantly stare, giggle and even ask to take our pictures.  We’ve commented more than once that if we made people pay even 5 baht (the equivalent of about 15 cents) we could easily make enough money for dinner.  So, she made herself a sign and she walked around the market propositioning people for photos.  She ended up making 30 baht and gaining a new hat and making a lot of people laugh. We followed up those escapades with a fireworks show over the lake in the park.

The next night there was another dance performance.  This one was even more traditional. The dancers dress up in elaborate costumes (demons, monkeys and such) and the dances often tell a story of some sort. It’s sort of like a cross between ballet and hula in my brain, every once in awhile you’ll get full body movement (usually from the men) but often it’s very small steps, turning in circles, and lots of slow, graceful hand movements.  They performed out in front of one of the nearby temples which made for a dramatic backdrop all lit up under the black sky (though killer for getting any sort of decent photo.)  It was a lovely way to spend an evening.

going to a festival.

This last week was a busy one. We had a lot going on both at school and in town. First up we had a rive harvest celebration at the school. We loaded the preschool kids up into vans and ventured a couple of miles over to the elementary school. The kids were dressed up in native costumes and the parents turned out in droves. We had a local man give a harvest demonstration and then the kids were handed sickles and turned lose in the field to do some harvesting of their own. They cut the stalks, pulled the seeds off the stalks and then removed the grains from the husks. It was quite the process.

They followed it all up with a little carnival complete with food, games, karaoke and more. Pretty much we’re just always looking for an excuse to not do real school work.

In conjunction with this (sort of) was a national festival Loi Krathong on Sunday. This harvest festival takes place on the full moon of the 12th Thai month (which happened to be November this year). It gives thanks to the river and sky deities for the rain/water/abundant harvest and sends wishes for more success to come.

Elaborate floating candles are made of banana leaves, flowers and even food then are lit and sent out onto the water (the biggest celebration happens a little farther north along the Mekong River but we had a pretty decent showing in the lake in our park). There are also paper lanterns that are lit, filling with hot air and then rising into the sky. (Think of the movie Tangled- same, same!) If you can forget about all the pollution it’s really magical. Like stars you can touch or really big fireflies. (Apparently some even make it as far as the west coast of the USA and more ufo sightings are reported that day than any other as people see lights in the sky that then suddenly disappear.)

There were a few in the sky the first night I got here, leftover from Buddhist lent and they greeted me like tiny beacons of hope and wishes for the best in my new adventure so to see the sky full of them was truly an amazing sight.

How was your weekend?