Socialization

The second day of school for Taiten went unexpectantly well.  Mon and I took him to his classroom where without hesitation he waved goodbye to us and went to play with another boy.
Yesterday, after the kids got out of school, we went to Mon's friends place to visit and have dinner.  This is the first time since I have been here that Mon has hung out with her friends and hopefully it will become a common occurrence in the future.

Socializing isn't a big part of the Thai culture.  The kids hardly hangout with anyone other than grown ups and family.  Unlike Taiten, Bow doesn't even hang out with the kids in the village.  She usually stays with Mon, Peelawon, Sa or I.  Not once during the summer holidays  did she have a friend come over or play with anyone her age.  When I came back from Phuket, Bow told me she missed having someone to hang out with.

I am always trying to encourage her to have friends over or to hang out with the girls in the village but she would rather sit and interact with the grown ups.  When she does have kids her age around, like she did last night at Mon's friends, she doesn't interact with them.  Her friend actually stayed in the house and played on Bow's laptop while Bow played on the swing in the yard.

Sleepovers are unheard of over here along with team sports.  Schools don't have team sports but they do however play team games.  There are team sports, such as soccer, for grown ups but there isn't many social activities outside of school for kids.  Bow has friends in her taekwondo class but she never hangs out with them outside of the gym.

We mostly just ate at Mon's friends place.  When I say ate I mean we ATE!  We went through two huge bags of fruit between the seven of us and a huge chunk of pork.  There was a monk ceremony going on across the road which we attended later on in the evening.  Again we ate.

Despite not wanting to go, since all the drunk idiots try to dance with me, I got dragged there anyway.  I felt like her friend wanted me to go to say that she was associated with a white person since she kept introducing me to everyone.  I then realized she thought I had never seen a monk ceremony and wanted me to go for the experience.  I am glad that I have learned the words "I don't want" since I needed them to reject a guy who wanted to dance and a guy who wanted me to drink whiskey.  Still have yet to learn how to say piss off though :p