I spent all day today at Freshman Orientation. The morning started by loading all of the freshman from our campus into big busses and transporting them to the Rangsit campus of Thamassat University. The orientation was held in the big indoor stadium there.
The festivities included speeches by various high-ranking officials of the school, an hour long lecture/sermon by an apparently famous monk, and performances by the school chorus, individual singers, modern and traditional dance teams, cheerleaders, and bagpipe (!) band (but not all at the same time).
Then they held a string tying ceremony. I don't really know how to describe this, since it was all performed in Thai, but I think the main gist of it was a blessing of the incoming freshman. After the blessing, the students came up to the sitting teachers (including me), knelt, wai'ed, and held out their arm. The teachers then tied the string around the student's wrist and gave them a word of advice or a blessing. (Good luck. Don't fail. Study hard. Stay out of jail...)
We finished the night with a concert by "Silly Fools", a well-known Thai rock band. The kids loved it and showed their appreciation by jumping around and screaming the lyrics to every song. I stood in the back and felt very old all of a sudden.
