The End

The end of this school year is coming to a close leaving cause for celebration. Yesterday all of the students in M6 and M3 came to school early to make merit to the monks as they get ready to move onto the next journey in their lives. After making merit and a normal role call ceremony the flowers came out. Everyone was pulling out roses and giving them to their friends - it was like Valentine's Day except that it was on steroids and it wasn't the 14th of February. By the end of the day I had a bouquet of flowers, 5 long stemmed roses, three lollipops, a neck chain of fake money and a handful of candy.

All the students except for M6 and M3 left to go study and the rest of us stayed on the blacktop and prayed, chanted and waied some more. Afterwards we all made merit by placing one of our roses at the base of "Phra Piya" [the statue of Piyamaharachalai], wai-ing and then forming a line in our class. I am in M6/6 and when it was our turn we walked towards the big hall we would be having our party in and were greeted by all the students of M5/1. We walked through an archway to an overhang with coloured ribbons hanging from it and the M5/1 students crowded around us chanting our school song and handing us more flowers and candy. My friends started to cry.

We all took our places on the floor in the entrance hall and after many speeches from our teachers, director and a monk from the nearby Wat we started the Bai See ceremony. Everyone crowded on the floor, we layed our hands on the back of the person in front of us and the monk lit incense and candles; he said a prayer, chanted and then we ran around the hall taking pictures and having people bless us with the ceremonious pieces of string. When I saw my friends and blessed them I started to cry - I am not leaving yet, but they are leaving me. This week as well as next will be the last time I will see many of them, as they are all going off to University in April and I may not see them over the school break.

We took a lunch break and took hundreds of pictures outside where M5/1 had created a bunch of backgrounds for us to photograph around. There was a giant congratulations sign, a pink and yellow board made of balloons with superhero speech bubbles that had phrases written on them and two giant tshirts with our school emblem on them. After lunch, more picture taking, rose handouts and crying we returned to the hall where our classmates put on a concert for us with all of the most popular Thai songs. It was amazing. There were 4 boys who took turns singing and we were all jumping around and screaming at the front of the stage while some of them tried to jump off into the crowd; they almost made it.

Coming back to school in May will be different - my friends will have left me, I will make a whole new group of friends, and it will be that much closer to my return home. I look back now and wish I had spent more time at school and with my Thai friends than I did. I love them with everything and all of me; they are the kindest people in the world.

"You'll always be my best friend" - Relient K

[I will update this blog post tonight with a little more writing and pictures]