See Muang

I am sore, and I feel as if I should be covered with black bruises though my skin is as white as ever.

Thursday was Colour Sport Day - day 3. The day of my big race, the day of the final competitions and the day that the results of the three day competitions were announced. I woke up at 8, biked the 4 km from Suzanne's house to the school and crossed the large field to the bleachers overflowing with colourful students. My cheerleader friends were there all dressed up - the boys in jeans and white flannel shirts with cowboy hats, and the girls in black tight pants, tank tops and big black hats covered in fishnet. My other friends were there in their school gym pants, and their purple shirts, all of them wearing matching painted Vietnamese straw hats. They had big tents set up with CD's hanging from them, and our display was set up at the back of the bleachers. Everyone was excited and full of energy. The other colours were also set up similarly to ours along the same side of the field, on the other was the marshalling area for the runners, in the centre of the field was a painted track and a tug of war rope.

Ai told me that instead of just running the relay race with her and our other two friends, I also had to run a 200m sprint by myself. My first race was in the morning and the relay was in the afternoon - lots of time to recooperate between races. I haven't run a race since grade 8 so I wasn't feeling particularly confident, but my legs are longer than the other girls' so I was hoping that would give me an advantage. I was taken to the marshalling area and we sat around for a while as we watched the younger students take turns racing around the field. Apparently in Thailand, you don't wear shoes while you race, you go barefoot. I decided to go against my natural instinct to wear running shoes and ran the first race barefoot. The race didn't go quite as spectacularly as I had hoped, running on grass really isn't my preference and neither is starting at the sound of a gun. Guns scare me, even in elementary school I had to run last for relays because I can't start when they use guns. I did end up in second, only a metre or so behind see luang [yellow], but it was a little disheartening, my team had been counting on my long legs to get first. Oh well, I tried.

Some boys in the shade called me over to sit with them and for a while we sat and made small talk in Thai while watching the races. I wanted to buy them icecream but they wouldn't let me - it was seriously no problem for me to buy them icecream, it isn't expensive at all but they kept saying no. We lost the tug of war - 15 girls from see muang [purple] vs. 15 girls from see luang. We really didn't have a strategy - "JUST PULL!" was what we said, but a strategy is probably the best idea for tug of war. Our boys won however, so that was exciting. We had lunch in the shade of the tents, I finally persuaded my friend Wut to let me buy him icecream and we cheered on the cheerleaders as they performed. The girls were now wearing green flowerprinted dresses with big sunflowers in their hair.

In the afternoon, Ai came to get me to go for our relay race. Unfortunately during the race one of the girls rolled over her ankle and I had to try to catch up to a 60m gap between us and the colour in 4th. We ended up in 5th, but we were still happy that the other purple team got 2nd. By then, I had run too much in one day, I was feeling faint and my legs were sore. But 10 minutes later as I was lying on the ground, a few girls from purple came up to tell me that a girl on their relay team had a stomach ache and couldn't run. They wanted me to run with them, in the next race. So I was off again, running 100m this time and our team got 2nd. YAY! :)

To finish off the day all the colours gathered on the field with flags and signs and the director called out all the winners for every event. The big one was last - the winners of the cheering [cheerleaders, clapping students etc.] And the winner is.... SEE MUANG!!!!

It was utter pandemonium, the ladyboys next to me screamed at the top of their lungs - shrieking. Everyone was throwing their Vietnamese hats, waving flags, screaming and P'Four was in tears that his cheerleading team had won. Hugging broke out, kissing [?!!!!!!!!!!] and high fives all around. Then the entire school formed groups of circles and swayed back and forth as we sang - the circles broke out into the konga.

That evening the M5 and M6 students from see muang all went out for Japanese suki. We sat at the restaurant eating buffet for hours, drinking slushies and eating seafood. Afterwards we went to the karaoke shop next door and 30 of us crammed into a tiny room where they blared Thai rock, pop and rap while dancing and singing along. It was the most fun I've ever had singing karaoke - even though I didn't know the words.

"We will, we will rock you"