Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Thai Instruments

Here's me learning to play the "saw-ooh" -- the Thai violin. It makes a horrible noise. My friend, Wineo, is a local school teacher who runs an amazing youth music program. He's giving me Thai lessons and music lessons 3 times a week. He and his wife have been wonderful.

Songkran -- the Thai New Year

If you ask me what my work has been these past couple weeks I can only say: survival.

No, no. There's no real danger. Just trying to survive the biggest 2 weeks of parties I've seen in my life. It's been nuts here. Songkran, the traditional Thai New Year was last week. however, this festival has been transformed into a week-long water fight, party, get crazy and drunk and go wild. As it's the hot season, all the kids are off school for a couple months, and everyone is fried from the heat, I think my community took this as a great opportunity to go completely crazy. People are getting ordained as monks daily (each ordination is a multi-day party too), so I'm going to parties like crazy. In fact, I just came back from a party this morning. Then there's parades, dancing, fairs... Who knew Thais were such partying fools?