The King's Birthday / Father's Day

Today is the King's Birthday / aka Father's Day, so we get the day off from work! Yay! I'm going to Koh Samet for the long weekend, yay! haha It's Father's Day because of the King's Birthday. Mother's Day happens in August when it's the Queen's Birthday. I am going to try to find something yellow to wear to be respectful, but I'm not sure if I have anything clean... oh dear. Yellow is the King's color, if you remember.

Yesterday was a very significant day. It started off by watching Kung Fu Panda at school, which was very exciting. If you haven't seen Kung Fu Panda, go watch it, cause it's awesome. I ditched my class and went in another room to watch it. haha All the classes were being herded in the rooms downstairs to get prepared for the monk ceremony. Monks had come to conduct a ceremony in honor of the King's birthday the next day. When it was time everybody went out to their parents and sat around on their knees and got ready to give offering to the monks. You are supposed to give the monks things to put in their silver/ gold buckets that they carry around. Things like food / medicince / water, things they can take back to the temple and distribute to the other monks. As a school, we managed to bring the monks two pick up trucks fu of monk supplies. I'm proud to say that I contributed a yellow buddha bucket that you can buy at the Big C. I am the one and only farang teacher who contributed.

At the Big C or Tesco Lotus (places like Walmart), they have whole aisles you can go to to that are labeled "Monk Supplies" and they have yellow buckets all lined up the aisle to buy. I proudly went the night before to buy one for the big day. haha Mine had a variety of things... some water, noodles, some sort of pills... hahaha

Anyways, the monks came around and received their offerings and did some chanting and then left. Then the kids all scurried to my room. I was very surprised that it didn't take longer and I had nothing planned for the day, so we made Father's Day cards, which worked all quite nicely.

Then at the end of the end day, something very very important happened. I quit my job. As of December 24 I will be unemployed. Happy Christmas to me. It's really quite a shame that I am leaving Phoenix because it is a great school and I love the people that I work with (with the one exception of Mark, hahaha) and the kids there, but I absolutely cannot live in Pattaya anymore and I am very very excited to move to Bangkok. It was very difficult telling Mei though. She's just so stinkin' nice! I hope that her and I will still be friends!

When I got home, it was Azalea's birthday, so the group and I sat around and made loads of guacomole and mojitos before going out to Walking Street. The guacomole tasted like a piece of heaven. hahaha I haven't had it SO long! haha Walking Street was fun, but not gonna lie, one of the things I was thinking when I was walking home "oh, I am so happy that I'm moving and won't get to do this much longer" hahahaha.

Alrighty, I'm going to go pack, get some grilled bananas (my new addiction...), and figure out how I'm getting to Koh Samet!

Oh, and I ate a grasshopper!