uncork the malt liquor & go buy some rolling papers, cause it's a partay!

Whoo hoo! We hosted our first house party here at ye olde Sayo Niedzwiecki Tropical Homestead. Twenty-one kindergardeners, six teachers, a nurse, the handyman, a maid, the boss of the school, Bob, and Ji Hong joined in for the riggity jiggity fun. Before the party we went on our year end field trip to the National Science Centre for Education and the Bangkok Planetarium (see Ji's page for the link). I organized the trip and am happy to report that it was a logistical dream come true and went off without a hitch.

All the kids got cute little space explorer name tags with their group name printed below. I was in charge of the 'sun' team. Go sun! All the teams had their morning snack at school and then we hopped onto mini-buses to go down Ekkamai. The buses were distressingly equipped with TVs playing Tom & Jerry. I dunno, it might've just been my no-violent-TV upbringing but I loathe Tom & Jerry. Like, at least the Coyote got to come up with complex inventions and there were non-deathly downtimes when he'd order up some new contraption from Acme. But in T & J it's just non-stop smiting. It's worse than that Robert Rodriguez movie where Johnny Depp goes around town with his eyes stabbed out - or something like that, I couldn't watch it. It's worse by far than anything Tarantino's ever come up with. At least his movies come with a catchy soundtrack. No, Tom & Jerry is just plain old idiocy.

And sitting right in front of the TV, with two of my kids providing ongoing running commentary ("Teacher, teacher! Look! Now Tom is going to go up on the table and BAM BAM BAM BAM Jerry is going to chop him with the knife! Look! Now Jerry is going to SMASH SMASH Jerry CHOP him and then BANG. Teacher, did you know I have this video at home? Did you know I have Tom & Jerry? This is Tom & Jerry, Teacher. Next thing, Jerry is going to WHAM WHAM WHACK Tom! Teacher, look!") and having the van stop 'n go in the crazy traffic made me juuuust about ready to puke.

But fortunately that was the only bad point of the entire trip.

Once we got to the Science Centre, things clicked along like clock-work. Got tickets, went to Building #2, made hour-glasses. Went to the planetarium, got good seats, watched a cool show about the planets. Had a snack, hiked the 4-minute walk over to building #4, visited the insect, and environment displays, then went to the play area, played, and exited at precisely the right time. Got back on the mini-buses and headed over to the apartment for lunch. The school crew was already set, dishing out fried rice and soup when we got there. The house looked great with all of the decorations we'd put up the night before. (As a side note, GOOD LORD was it hard to get Bob and Phet and Ji Hong to help decorate. I'd find it easier spending a couple of decades as chief taskmaster at an Egyptian pyramid during construction. I thought I'd get them to do the easy stuff while I cleaned the house, but all I heard was 'wah wah wah, we don't know how to tie balloons' and 'oh dear, it is so hard to stick balloons to the wall' and 'En Garde! Let's play three musketeers with these long balloons instead of sticking them on the wall like your Mom said'. I knew things had really gotten bad when Phet did a rhythmic gymnastics routine with the streamers and Bob was actually impressed with his artistic skills. Jeez, men!). Here's some of the wall art the kids did:

The picture with the red circle in the middle is showing all of the planets circling around the sun, with the moon on the left outside the ring. Wicked! I also dig the picture on the bottom right, in which it appears that an ill-fated giant bird is plummeting to its death amidst an otherwise bucolic-looking landscape. Happy Graduation, indeed.

The kids enjoyed lunch and then were herded into the computer room to ransack Ji's toys. Ji was a spectacular host. He passed out cups unbidden, and he shared all of his toys without even a peep of a phrase like "that's mine!" crossing his lips. He also wasn't a nutcase. He was a calm, pleasant, and helpful fellow. Some days we feel like we done good. Here are the kids engineering a new highway to relieve Bangkok's traffic constipation:

After the toy fiesta, the kids tucked in to some tasty chocolate sundaes with M & Ms on top. Miam miam! When I'd gone to the supermarket to buy the party supplies, I'd picked up some maraschino cherries. Well, at least they looked like cherries. What do you think, would YOU have guessed that these are actually sour Chinese plums with not only centrally-placed pits, but also containing mini pit-like seeds in their outer core? Would the nuclear levels of Red Dye #2 have fooled you like they fooled me? Just lucky I didn't make a fruitcake.

Glad we've gotten our party skills a-poppin'. Only one month until the grand hoo-haa countryside house party up in Howdy-doody-howdenvale! [Bangkok-13-July-2005]