Children's Day - Part One Morning

Children's Day is pretty big in Thailand. I understand they offer special discounts at lots of places in town so it's probably not the best time to go to the zoo if you want to go on a nice quiet day. Considering we don't have any children I'm not really up on what all is available for children on this day, but this year we did have some experiences since we're working in the schools on a consistent schedule. Our teaching schedule was canceled because the schools had special activities planned for the kids, but we were invited to come and participate.

In the morning Rusty and Hope went to the pre-school/kindergarten that we teach at Wednesday - Friday. Here are some pictures and videos from their activities.
It was a little cool in the early morning, but everyone was ready to go for some circle games.Ahh...nothing like a good game of musical chairs. I'm glad these are little guys; playing in the plastic chairs here could be dangerous for adults. When Rusty flipped the camera's viewing screen around so the kids could see themselves, they really livened up.
The kids really love Rusty. Ever morning when we get to school, the kids hang around outside drinking water so they can shake his hand. It's really cute!
They often compare their skin color with ours. They say that we're very white, and they call themselves very dark. I guess none of us are very happy with how God created us. If we're fair-skinned we want a tan. If we're already tan, we want fair skin. If we have straight hair, we want curly. If we have curly, we want straight.

Usually when we arrive at this school in the mornings, the students are still outside doing their opening assembly. The students line up in the morning and raise the flags, sing the national anthem, and do their Buddhist worship. After that this particular school does a series of warm-up exercises. Hula hoops have gained in popularity throughout the last five years that we've been here, and the students are getting quite good at it! They also dance and do other exercises to warm up and get ready for the day.

Sometimes we have a hard time explaining games, but this game turned out really cute even though some of the kids didn't really get into it. I love the little boy who was covering his ears...I feel the same way sometimes when balloons pop.