HOT HOT HOT!

So to update you all...It has been a complete rollercoaster the past couple days! Thursday we spent most of the day rehersing for our shows on Friday... It was especially interesting because we found out that we would be performing in a big alumninum shed. The acoustics were quite interesting and you would hear yourself after a 2 second delay...kinda funny actually. Also, there was no Air Conditioning, which in case you were wondering, the show is a naturally high energy show and I usually sweat a lot during a show in a 'regular' building so I was pretty drenched after the three shows on Friday. We performed 2 in the afternoon for school students and 1 in the evening for the general audience. We found out in that day alone we performed for over 10,000 people!! It was so crazy during the school shows because the kids we were performing for had never really gotten to see anything like this and so we were like rock stars in thier eyes which was cool but you had to be careful after the show so you weren't mobed by tiny Thai children!! The girls went especially crazy for some of the boys in our cast and everytime they would come out on stage all the girls would erupt in a high pitched scream! It was like being at a boy band concert! I realize now that I have sympathy for actual celebrities when they are mauled by their screaming fans!
I started Saturday by being completely exausted after all of the energy that I used up at the shows on Friday, but somehow found the energy to get into what was in store for us. We started the morning with a local speaker who had some incredible insight, and I think the best thing I took away from him was the difference between Western culture and Eastern culture and how in the east life is more focused on harmony and that the earth is very sacred. He also touched on how the trees are considered extra special. This really hit me as I started thinking about the rest of the week and how on Monday we are going to plant trees around the community with Monk. So we get to be involved in something that is considered a very spiritual and sacred act. Another thing that our speaker touched on was the fact that in Eastern culutre they worship the moon and so back when the US first walked on the moon, we saw it as a great accomplishment but while we were celebrating people half way around the world were crying because we had placed our feet (something they consider very dirty) on something they worshiped. This got me thinking about how so much of the US culture is about achievement and sometimes we get so caught up in what is happening around us we forget to consider how it will impact the people around us, or the people half way around the world.
After the speaker we went to the King Cobra Village and I was so excited to go and see the huge snakes but when I got there I was very suprised with what I saw. We got there and were told to go look at the animals and what we saw really hurt my heart. There were monkeys trapped in these tiny cages and you could tell they were full of anger from being trapped in such small cages. If you put your hand to close they would swat at it and try to grab things from you. I was watching one of the monkeys with a girl from the cast and she got too close trying to take a picture and the monkey grabbed the cord of her camera and started tugging on it full force. Then one of the workers came over and raised a hand to the monkey and it immediately cowered down like dogs do when they have been beaten and abused. This just tore my heart out. After that I moved on and kept looking at the animals when I came upon a big black bear that was sleeping in a cage that was probably no bigger than a 10'x10'x10' cage. It made me wonder how it got there because there aren't bears in Thailand. After this I had seen enough so I sat down for the show. When the show started 4 women came on stage and did a dance with the snakes around thier bodies and toward the end of the dance put the snakes' head in thier mouths and played it like a flute. It was especially hard to watch because the womens' eyes looked so lifeless like they hated what they were doing but it was a way to make money. After the women were done these men came out and started to do 'snake boxing' which was not what I expected to happen. It was so hard to watch because these men would make the snakes angry so they would flatten their 'necks' to look good for the audience, and then they would get the snakes to lunge at them, but many times the snakes would try to flee and the men would drag them back by the tails and make them fight. It was so hard to watch. I am still trying to process how I feel about everything because I know in my heart that it is wrong to treat animals like that, but if it is the only way for these families to make enough money to survive or to put their children through school, then is it tolerable?
Later in the afternoon we went to the local school and had cast olymics! I was so completely drained of energy that I was not excited at all to have to run around and act like I was enjoying it, but I was completely wrong. We ended up having wacky relay races (like potato sack races and coconut races)! It was so much fun and it had rained so the grass was muddy and we got so dirty. We then had an extreme eating contest where we had to dig things out of a pile of flour and eat bananas handing from a rope without our hands, etc. By the end it turned into a huge flour fight and we were all covered in mud and water and flour! It was so much fun and I think we all needed it after the more serious morning we had!! That is all I am writing for now because this post is so incredibly LONG!! Sawadee kaa! (goodbye in Thai)