Things from the market

Since our school is a temple school, it shares its grounds with a temple... sounds pretty simple. Because of this it is both a school and a sort of community centre where community events are held, such as the morning market on Tuesday and Friday mornings. You may have heard us mention the market before as it is somewhat a bone of contention with us teachers here... not because we don't enjoy purchasing fresh produce or delicious sticky rice but because sometimes the vendors seem to us to be selling questionable items to children of such a young age. On the primary side of the school this seems to be less of a problem but the poor matayom teachers really get the short end of the proverbial market stick.

The first example of this was the fireworks incident. A market vendor was selling firecrackers to students, and as mentioned in a previous post they were detonating these mini bombs all around the school. Shane lost the hearing in one ear for the better part of a day as the result of one of these charming fireworks.

The next item children were purchasing before school was hair elastics. Sounds harmless right? Not when they are strung together to create a slingshot from which students shoot tiny paper balls at each other. Watch out or you might lose an eye! However, I suppose you can't really fault market vendors for selling hair elastics to children like you can for selling them explosives.

Following the hair elastics incident came the BB Guns. Shane was collecting them to arm the staff in case of a students' revolt but they started taking up too much room on his desk, so they have now gone to the tough Thai music teacher (who is known to be liberal with his "pia" -a bamboo rod used to smack unruly students). In order to reclaim your BB gun you must go through him, I will be curious to see who actually gets their guns back.

Probably the most hilarious thing that kids have bought at the market though is pets. Here is a conversation we had recently after market day:
Shane: "So, did any of your kids have like, gerbils in their pockets today?"
Hannah: "Um, no... did yours?"
Shane: "Yeah, I think they got them at the market and they were keeping them in their backpacks or pockets or something. There were gerbils all over the place all day."

Oh yes, the old pocket gerbil. I wonder if they cleaned their pockets after having a rodent pooping in them all day. So far on the primary side the biggest surprise that we have had is fish. A student marched proudly up to the front of the room saying "teacher! fish!". Indeed, he had a bag full of fish which he then proceeded to stuff in his desk. I later saw him with the same fish in a water bottle. Their chances of survival are probably slim.

 Kids selecting fish before school

 More fish

 These kids are looking at the vendor's selection of BB guns like, these are garbage! Where is the guy from last week?