●*Wai Kru Ceremony

Wai Kru Ceremony

Wai Kru day is to show respect to the teachers. Wai Kru is the one of the biggest celebrations in Thailand. Students hold the flower arrangement with two hands and give it to the teachers. In Thailand, the teacher’s day is 16th of January. Wai Kru started in 1957.
On this day, students show respect to their teachers by giving them a special flower arrangement that consists of eggplant flower, Bermuda grass, and popped rice. These flowers have meaning; eggplant flower stands for humility, Bermuda grass for patience and popped rice for discipline. Once students give flowers to the teachers, they have a short speech to thank the teachers. Finally, everyone prays for teachers’ happiness.

For Korean Teacher’s day, we don’t have such a big assembly or purposes. We also don’t give flowers and just give HR teacher who teach almost every subject. We give some kinds of presents or whatever we want to them. Even Japan doesn’t have teacher’s day so it shows that we’re not so interested about teacher’s day but for Thailand it is really considered a special day because teachers are highly respected in the country.

I also gave flower to teacher on 16th Jan, 2008 To Ms.Tonja. I feeling like I can’t understand Thai way to respect to teacher reason why I’m foreigner. I did Way to teacher and stand up. When I did that, I don’t know why I need to do this even I’m foreigner. I thought only Thai is include. But you know, RIST’s not so much of purposes. Then staffs and teachers were busy at prepare. Day before we started the show, we did the practice but when Ms.Ying told our class about it, she didn’t called me and my friend who need to give flower that’s why I thought we don’t need to but when I just go through the PAC, one Thai teacher called us and we did practice.

By Christina