The pig goes oot oot

One of Hannah's pet interests is finding out what noises animals make in other countries. You should try it some time, the results will often surprise you. This fact was brought to the fore the other day in Kindergarten when teaching the kids the classic song "Old MacDonald". Although the kids cannot understand the words (and so far can only sing the Ee I Ee I Oh part) they CAN make some excellent animal noises and thus it was discovered that in Thailand:
The dog says "hung hung"
The duck says "gawp gawp"
The pig says "oot oot"
Chickens say "kataw kataw"

I am hopefully going to figure out some more sweet animal noises this week. Need to get some sort of animal flashcards going on. Then I can teach the kids the English names and myself the Thai sounds!

Also notable... in Thailand trains say "choo cha choo cha POOT POOT" rather than "chugga chugga choo choo" We make a train to go from one station to another in our colour groups so I get to hear this fairly often!

This week is "Sport Day" (an inaccurate name as it lasts all week) on the Matayom (highschool) side of the school. As with any celebration or festival in Thailand this:
1. is a giant production
2. includes some form of pyrotechnics
3. exhibits some lack of organization
In Canada, when you go to see fireworks they are generally lit far from where the crowd is standing. There is some kind of organization to prevent you from getting your face blown off. Usually in Canada, fireworks involve some kind of aerial display of sparks. Fireworks are also regulated. In Thailand none of these things are likely to be the case. They often light fireworks right next to you (in fact we hear that there are some celebrations where they actually shoot Roman Candles at people). The fireworks do not always include any aerial display, and seem to be more like bombs...
Today for sports day they seemed to be filling coconut shells with what we assume was dynamite. These explosions were terrifying (sending kindergarten children diving to the floor and screaming even though they
were across the road in another building) and sent shrapnel raining from the sky onto the students below.
Another highlight of sport day opening ceremonies -the flaming baton twirlers. Unfortunately these poor kids had apparently missed a couple of practices, and weren't quite up to the challenge of keeping a flaming baton away from their bodies... ouch. 
All-in-all, a magnificent opening ceremony for Sport Day.

*No children were actually harmed in the making of this blog post*

Also, a note to our faithful readers. Just to keep you informed, we have now broken our record for most family members on a motorbike. The previous record was four, we have smashed it by seeing a family of six all crowded on one bike. Another family of four was also seen with the addition of a chicken, hardly record breaking but hilarious nonetheless...