Thai Dance Performance (Golden Dress Take Two)

Yesterday was my big Thai dance performance at school (there was a whole kind of festival thingy going on at school mainly I guess so kids who will be going to high school next year can go check out what the school has to offer)! Which meant, of course, that I had to wake up extra early and go to school at 7 a.m. to have my hair and makeup all done, and to get into my dancing costume. I was fairly amazed by how light they went on hair and makeup (compared to my previous experiences in Thailand), I'm pretty sure I didn't even have one squirt of hairspray aimed at my head (however the fake hairpiece I had to wear looked a little silly as it was black, and didn't really match the rest of my head....). The costumes on the other hand, weren't quite as simple. They started out with a gold skirt and gold tube top, and then were blinged out with golden belts, necklaces, armbands, bracelets, ear pierces, hair pieces, and golden wings. We practiced a couple of times in the studio, and then headed down to perform, but of course, since this IS Thailand, we had to stop and take pictures on the way... I ran into Win whilst taking pictures, which was fortunate, because I was able to tell him that we would be dancing on the smaller stage at the front of the school, rather than on the main stage... so although he came and watched us, none of my other friends did since they were all waiting in front of the other stage (thinking that is where I would be performing). We performed a second time in the air con conference room... Both dances went fairly well, although I will admit I did make a couple of mistakes both times... I still had fun though, and I'm really glad I actually managed to learn Thai dance this year (since there were alot of things I managed not to learn, ahem, due to having a lazy Advisor and what not............).

The rest of the day was spent just hanging around the school with my friends, and waiting for Win's band to play... They played really well, although it was a much softer set than the screamo they usually play.. I took a couple of videos of them, but since I was so far from the stage none of them really turned out all that well... And I do have a video of me dancing, but since I'm using dial-up internet right now, it will take forever to load.. and I don't really have forever. I'll upload it when I can get some time on a high speed connection...

This morning I met with Ing, Fon, and Yah (3 girls from my class) at the Nongchok Market, where we bought some food for making Suki, and then we all went to Patch's house... I guess they had to work on a socials project about helping the environment or something, I'm not really sure... But pretty much all we did was walk around Patch's house (where there are all kinds of fruit trees and vegetables and what not growing) and taking pictures of ourselves pretending to water the plants and what not. We also dug up a few potatos from Patch's garden which Ing cooked in a fire, and then we ate them with sugar, which trust me, I found very strange. I tried to convince them that baked potatos are much better with sour cream and cheese and bacon bits and what not, but they all wanted to puke at the idea of eating potatos like that. Then we made suki, which pretty much consists of boiling noodles, vegetables, and various meats in a pot to make soup... I guess it's really healthy for you, but personally it's not my favourite thing to eat (esepcially when the meat isn't thoroughly cooked enough...) It was fun though.. we hooked about 5 extention cords together to that we could take a rice cooker out into the yard and cook the suki outside and had kind of a picnic. There were lots of leftovers though, and Patch tried to convince us to eat them all by telling us to think of the starving kids in Africa who have no food or no clean water... which only made me realize how truly amazing of a person Patch is... her house really isn't much, and she doesn't own many possesions, but she isn't starving.