No, we don't have the "Pom Pom Dance!"

I never thought I would be, but I am now a cheerleader; or was as I finished yesterday.

Before I start, you must not be mistaken with the notion that cheerleading in Thailand is remotely close to cheerleading in Canada. In fact, nothing is - and from reading my blog you should all know that by now. When my host mother thinks something is "cute" and that you would be very "na rak" [cute] if you do it - that is pretty much an order. My host mother thought that cheerleading was "na rak" - so, naturally, I was dubbed into the cheerleading cult almost instantly - a long three weeks of practices both during every one of my lunch periods, as well as gang meetings at the dark school, every single night.

Instead of having sports throughout the year, Thai people have "Colour Sport Day" - a three day track & field day where every sport is played by the students in the school. The school is split up into four colours - yellow, pink, blue and purple and the colours compete through each sport [including cheerleading]. I am on the purple team, and our cheerleading practices are very different during lunch time than they are at night. During lunch we meet outside of the English department on the lawn and they teach me a new cheer every day. Apparently I am learning fast - but as Thai cheerleading requires only the movement of your arms, I don't feel remotely proud of this accomplishment. The practices usually last 30 minutes in which there are frequent breaks, most of which involve me running away to play volleyball with the boys, or talk with my friends. The students who are not involved in a sport or cheerleading sit on the lawn and learn cheers! Just imagine, 100 students all chanting and clapping together, run by a 17 year old equipped with a megaphone and her band of troops. They call themselves "Staff" and wear nametags; some of the cheers they teach are rendered from English cheers ie. "We Will Rock You", "I Feel Good", and a Thai cheer to the tune of "When The Saints Go Marching In". Our choreographers is a boy in M6 named P'Four, a ladyboy who has better style than me and also has a twin brother - another ladyboy choreographer for "see chompoo" [pink].

At night time however, when there are no teachers and the hundred students cheering are at home studying [or sleeping] we gather on the patio at the school. Practice is much more intense; there are less frequent breaks, more yelling from P'Four and more boys show up. Some of the boys are cute, and most of them are considered "gangsters" - according to Suzanne's host father. They drive in with their truck, blaring Thaitanium [Thai rap] and on the back of their motorbikes. Then they dance on top of their truck for a good 15 minutes before coming to join the practice. I had the pleasure of joining them once with a few other girls on my team and they were more than surprised to see the falang's version of dancing to rap. The girls on the cheerleading team don't talk to me very often, so I usually talk to the boys. They are very nice - I always find the ladyboys the most entertaining though, they also dance the best.

Yesterday was our performance and it was slightly bitter-sweet. After going through the long process of makeup and hair for Lai Rua Fai I was less than ecstatic to have to go through the whole thing again. This time I had to be up for 4am, so again I stayed up all night, one of the boys picked me up at my houst 45 minutes late in the blackness of the early morning and I arrived in my school uniform [like the told me] and they were all still wearing jeans and sweaters. It is now cold here, so wearing a skirt and t-shirt was much colder than I had thought - but I should have guessed, Thai people never tell you exactly what is going on, they tend to leave bits of information out. They put my hair in a mullet [trendy in Thailand] and 4 pounds of makeup later, donned with different coloured [and different sized] earrings we were ready to go. As Thailand is a country where anything is possible, even the boys had loads of makeup on - glitter on their lips and everything. I told them they looked pretty and giggled at their purple eyeshadow and sparkly lips - they told me they would rather be handsome :) One of the girls had bought purple sashes but forgot that I was on the team with them and so I didn't wear one. They also forgot to buy me matching black stiletto shoes - so I wore gold ones.

We walked out in front of the student body - which was split up into colours with everyone wearing matching shirts and pants in their colour - and danced. It was exhilarating, the students sang the cheers faster than we had practiced so I found my arms flying at an alarming pace, and watching my friends in the front row cheering the loudest. It was quite amusing, but after we finished performing and cheered at the endless line of basketball games for hours on end, I was exhausted and the lack of sleep was catching up on me. We were the only cheerleading team that cheered throughout the entire day; the other colour teams got tired and left. I left for a few hours and took haven in the nurse's office where I slept for a few hours [with the nurse coming in every once in a while and putting her hand on my side] before returning to my team still smiling as wide as ever [except that two of the boys had left].

I have made very good friends with some of the boys on the team - one of them even took me out on a date. After practice one night he drove up beside me and my bike on his motorcycle and asked me if I had eaten yet. I had, but told him I could go eat if he hadn't yet. He wanted me to go out for icecream with him, so we dropped off my bike and I hopped on the back of his motorcycle. This was quite a sight for Thai people, as a girl usually only sits on the back of a boy's motorbike if they are dating. We had icecream, and then went to visit his cousin at her music performance where I ran into Suzanne. Then we went on a ride around the city, stopping off at the markets and then ending up at Suzanne's school where their cheerleading team was practicing. Cheerleading at N.P.W is much different than at Piya, it is much closer to Canadian cheerleading. Suzanne was there as well, and after attempting to take part in their practice [and almost dropping one of their cheerleaders] we tried to get them to play Red Rover with us. They didn't understand and instead shunned us while they continued practicing.

Tomorrow, I will be running in a 200m relay race with three of my friends from M5/1. They liked the fact that I have long [compared to Thai people's] legs so I was inducted into their team.

When my host mother enquired about cheerleading in Canada she asked
"Do you have Pom Pom dance?"
"No, we don't use Pom Poms"
"You don't have the Pom Pom dance?"
"Nope, that's only in movies"
"Really? But I see in movies..."
"Yep, in movies, but not in real life - school's don't have cheerleading teams"
"NO POM POM DANCE?!"

"Music's the reason why I know time still exists"
- Elisa