Happy Mother's Day!

In Thailand, Mother's Day is actually the Queen's birthday. Both Mother's and Father's Day are celebrated on the day of the King and Queen's birth and mostly revolve around the royal familiy, with mothers getting only a little recognition. The one good thing though is that it is a national holiday and the offices are closed, aka no work. Yesterday was Mother's Day and I decided to willingly be Thai-napped so that I could see what sort of crazy festivities this country had in store for this special day. One of the ladies who I work with and am rather close with because she speaks English the best out of anyone, invited me to come to her house and celebrate it with her in her village. She lives about 30 minutes from my tambon so I thought it would be interesting to get out and see what some of other villages were like. Her nickname is Aw so I call her P Aw. Anyone who is older than you is addressed with a P before their name. Also, no one goes by their full name, they all have nicknames, which is amazing because their real names are waaaay too hard to remember. Their nicknames are even hard but I have gotten used to them. For example, the 6 ladies that I go to lunch with everyday are named P Aw, P Tdiu, P Pawn, P Booaloi, P Tdu, and P Jas. Also, the family that I lived with here for the first month were called Na Ooan, Na Ngat, P Pen, P Pawn, P Sawai, and Ah Ma. Anyways, back to the whole Mother's Day deal. So we went to a local high school where they had a bunch of activities. All of the government workers were dressed up in what looked like military outfits, which if you ask me is quite appealing ;) Everyone else was dressed in bright blue. Clearly I had missed the memo about the Queen being born on a Friday, which is blue day, so everyone wears blue every Mother's Day. By the way, each day of the week is a certain color, so people try to wear that color each day. I haven't quite learned them seeing how I'm not really into color cordinating with an entire country, but I'm sure I will pick them up eventually. First, it started with all of the pre-schoolers coming out and singing a song to their moms. Then, they handed flowers to each of their mom's, who at that point were all crying. After that, they played a 5 minute long movie about the Queen while everyone sang this song, which I feel should be their national anthem. It is also played before every movie showing at the theatres along with the video. I learned that last time I went to a movie in Bangkok. After this, they gave out prizes to the best moms of the year. There were about 40 awards and it took about 2 hours to get through all of them since the moms were 70 yrs + and needed the assistance of about 5 people to get up on stage and then down the other side. After awhile P Aw asked if I wanted to go walk around and see what activities were being held. Apparently the government had sponsored boothes at this where they were giving out different products for free. For example, there was a hair salon booth that was giving haircuts for free, a massage booth giving free massages, a health booth where doctors from Bangkok checked your health for free, and about 5 boothes giving out free lunches. I clearly enjoyed this part as we walked around and ate delicious Thai food while enjoying free foot massages. After this, we went back to P Aw's house, which doubles as a restaurant. She hooked me up with more food and fed me their delicious green curry and rice, one of my most favorite meals here. After that, her and her two sons took me back to my tambon and drove me home. It was a very interesting day, but not as crazy as I thought it was going to be. It was actually a really cool community activity getting many of the members involved. I did think it was a little interesting how it is related to the Queen's birthday, I feel like every holiday or special event celebrates the royal family in some way.
Other than that, not too much is new with me here. I am currently teaching English approximately 100 times a week to a variety of different groups. I just upped my school teaching time to Tuesday through Thursday at two different schools for an hour each day at each school. I also teach on Mondays and Wednesdays at my house and sometimes on Saturdays. I figured since none of my projects have really taken flight, I might as well fill some time with teaching English. Two of the projects that I am working on right now involve a recycling project at one of my schools and a biogas project taking cow and pig poop and making methane gas to cook with, rather than using propane like they do now. I am also currently planning a beach trip for October. I will be taking a week and half off with 3 other volunteers and heading to the beach. We will be visiting Ko Samui, Ko Tao, Krabi, Ko Pi Pi (where The Beach was filmed) and then ending in Phuket for the vegetarian festival with about 10-15 other volunteers. I'm super excited and think that this little vacay will be much needed by then.
Well I'm off to lunch but I will try to update this more often, I know it's been a while.