We were supposed to do assembly this morning (we had planned on "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes..."), but there is no assembly when it rains; and, mind you, it is the rainy season (meaning, it rains/ downpours every day at some point). When it rains in the morning, the students line up in the hallways throughout the five buildings, and listen to the school and national anthem, and any speeches from the microphones that are blaring throughout the school grounds. But, since students cannot watch the stage, we silly 'farang' don't perform during rainy mornings. When we arrived at 7:45 this morning, it was lightly drizzling, so we were not sure if we were to still perform. We were told morning assembly was occurring, so we headed over to the field. Students lined up. After about 5 minutes, it started to rain, so the students were called off the field, and ran for cover in the buildings' hallways. After 2 minutes, the rain stopped, and the students were called back out onto the field! At this point, we were already informed that we would not be performing. We were also told that we would not have any afternoon classes due to "Cleaning Day". Yes, this messes up my lesson, as some classes will now be a week behind (but somehow, they'll catch up due to holidays and festivals throughout the semester... or I'll just to have to create 'filler' lessons).
After lunch period, all the students went to their respective buildings and started deep-cleaning... and I mean deep! I don't know how they were organized, but in our hallway, M6 students (17/18 year olds) were cleaning. I was out in the hallway cutting up 144 rectangular pieces of paper from large paper rolls. It is for my M1 classes for the next couple of weeks. I will be doing lessons on the months of the calendar, and have decided to split each of my 12 M1 classes up into 'monthly teams', thus 144 large pieces of paper were needed, as they will each create a month.
Looking out onto Building 3, we could see students hanging out of windows, cleaning and wiping down the outside of the building and the tops of the windows. Meanwhile, students in our hallway were sweeping the classrooms, scrubbing the walls, and moving furniture! It was quite a sight, and one very hard to explain in writing or through photographs -- but I attempted -- see photos at right and in my Picasa album.
The hallways were full of laughter... even though they were cleaning, they seemed to be having a lot of fun with it. In a way, I completely understand! No classes, and you can clean while hanging out with your friends. Sweat poured down from the poor boys who had to move furniture, girls took out their hand fans and were fanning the boys, perhaps, boys they liked. Teachers were walking up and down the hallways swatting at those students being lazy. M1 and M2 students were hanging out of windows and pulling chairs out to stand on to reach the top of the outside windows. Younger students shared the task of carrying buckets of water up and down the stairs. Fans were dusted. Grass was groomed, bushes cut with scissors. I even got a whiff of varnish at one point.
No comments:
Post a Comment