the fire drill

So we had a fire drill yesterday. Fire drills here are much more intense than back home. First of all, our school is huge, which right away makes everything a bigger deal. Second of all, in this country, they go all out. In the main building, they use smoke machines to simulate the fire...of course, this terrifies most of the kids and causes mass pandemonium. This pandemonium is added to by the fact that, for the most part, the only instruction given to the kids by the Thai teachers is "RUN!" Seriously, that is actually what they tell the kids.
In the building where I work, which is just kindergarten kids, they do not have smoke machines, because that would just be chaos, and the kids line up, for the most part, and just walk out of the building. In fact, most teachers put their shoes on because it had rained the night before.
One of my Thai teachers actually got some inside information as to the time of the fire drill, so we took the kids out to the playground for that time so that it would be easier (ya, that's right, we cheated. Welcome to Thailand, cheating is encouraged here, especially in school) Anyway, so we were on the playgound, all ready for the fire drill...but it didn't happen! Now, I'm sure that you are all aware that Thailand is a hot place, and this day was no exception. I usually take the kids out for no longer than 15 minutes, because more than that is just too hot. Well, yesterday we were out there for half an hour, when I finally convinced my Thai teachers that we had to go in. Then, I thought that we were going in, but we were actually just herding the kids to the side to read a story so that we could stay outside. By this time, the kids were all literally dripping sweat becasue they had been running in the heat, and I was dripping sweat because I had also been running, and because I am from Canada. I actually ended up staying in class for half an hour longer than I was supposed to because they refused to take the kids inside. Finally, I convinced them to go inside and I went back to the staff room. What do you know, five minutes later the alarm was ringing and the smoke machines were on, so I ran back to help carry children out of the building.
We got to the front of the school and lined up the kids, which took the kindergartens eight minutes (which was actually considered a good time...if there is ever a fire, we are all going to die...my plan is to just start throwing kids over the balcony into the fountains that are in our kindergarten building. That's right, we have a building full of 2-5 year olds, and there is a fountain and a stream running right through the middle...safety is not the number one concern in this country...which brings me right back to the fire drill...). One of the instructions for staff is that one male from each floor must take the fire extinguisher with him as he is leaving the building...nobody really knows why, but they all did it. So these fire extinguishers are super old, huge, and heavy. One male teacher was standing behind one of my three year olds with this thing, and the kid turned around, looked up at this man holding a massive extinguisher on his shoulder, and began to scream and cry in fear of this man...it was pretty funny.
I'm going to put some quotes from our fire drill instructions on here tomorrow, because they are pretty funny. They are mostly funny because they were obviously written in Thai first, and then translated, but they sound as though they were just typed into a translating program, and printed out...some of them make very little sense, that happens a lot here. They have an entire office of English speakers, but they never get anyone to edit anything...it's quite strange.
I have to teach this Saturday, so I'm not really going away this weekend. It's only for Saturday morning, so we'll probably go see some of Bangkok in the afternoon and we might take a boat to Ayutthaya (which is the old capital of Thailand) and see some ruins on Sunday.
Hope everyone is enjoying the end of their summer!