Rice Festival

Last wednesday a few of us who were lucky enough to have seen the signup sheet earlier that week were able to leave class early to go to Rangsit Campus (an hour away) to participate in the Thammasat Rice Harvest.
Rangsit campus is quite alot fancier than Tha Prachan (where i go to school), however it is quite removed from the city, so I'm glad to be at the city campus even if it has far less amenities. Also the dorms there have a midnight curfew, which is one of the stupidest things I have heard. The idea is that you will go back to your room in time and study or sleep. In reality, lets be honest, everyone either finds out what friends have nearby appartments or they just say "well its past midnight, looks like we have to party till 5am. we have no other choice, WE CANT GO HOME" I get frustrated just thinking about such an inane rule.
Anyhow, we arrived at the rice field which was about the size of the NWU greenspace and have to sign in. It turns out each 'faculty' (which is like a college when a university is broken into different colleges of study) sent 10 people to harvest the rice. Rice is a big deal in Thailand, its in about half of all thai dishes (the other half use noodles...rice noodles usually), and the harvest is done as a community. The festival started out with speeches by some important people in the university who I did not know. Some bits and pieces were translated for us exchange students. Next we got a folk music performance, not translated, but we got to yell syllables during the call and response part. Im sure we were actually saying words, but i didnt know what i was saying. Then the hand held sickles were handed out and we were shown how to harvest.

It was really easy actually. The rice grows in a clump, so you grab the stems with your left hand, and then with the sickle in your right hand (or vice versa if you are a southpaw) you pull towards you and then you throw the rice into a pile that gets loaded into a truck and processed later.
All the groups spread out across the field and started working across. I started off working near a bunch of Thai students. They kept showing me how to do it. Often when they demonstrated they had more trouble than I did. After the first 5 people showed me how to do it I thought to myself "If one more person shows me how to do this very simple task I'm going to stop trying to integrate and go work by the rest of the foreigners." I relocated nearby my classmates within ten minutes of starting the harvest.

Perhaps it was just to prove that i knew what I was doing to the condescending Thai students but I felt like I worked at a very good speed. But the rest of our group was cutting their way across the field quite rapidly as well. As we worked the band continued to play Thai folk songs, giving us an appropriate soundtrack for our work. After what i would estimate was about an hour, but i really have no clue, we made it to the end of the field. One of the Thai professors came over to us chuckling. "how is it," he asked "that the Farang harvest rice faster than the Thai?" Looking over the field, some groups were only halfway. The area that was trying to tell me how to do it right was not that far behind, us but it was still noticeable how far ahead we had finished (and didnt do anything incorrect) so we all felt proud and I felt personally vindicated.
This also put us first in line for food. the ever appropriate Pad Thai was served, wrapped in a banana leaf. It was quite good tasting.

As we ate, the band and speaker did some closeing ceremony stuff that was lost on me since it was in Thai. Then the MC came over to all of us exchange students and said they wanted us all to sing a song. We figured out that most of us knew Stand By Me, which we got up and sang.

It was then requested that we do another. Most people had sat back down so i performed Lean On Me with the band. They didnt know the song but were able to follow the key that iw as in very well, even when i changed it up without warning at the end. It was great being back on stage, it whetted my appetite for more. Unfortunatly, I dont think that will happen here.
Soon afterward, we helped them stack the chairs that they had set up, and got back on the bus for the trip back.