Thai New Year

Last year, we held a Chinese New Year Family Night with several families in our neighborhood who have Asian connections.  We have about 12 or so.  This year we decided to celebrate together again but selected to do Thai New Year.  We originally were doing it on April 15 because that showed up on a computer search as being the day it was starting this year.  However bad weather made us postpone it twice.  Finally Monday was a beautiful day so most of us were able to gather at Jensen Pond Park. 

We called it the "miracle of the monks".  We had decided not to reserve tables because it seemed silly to pay $50 when we were flexible about what tables we used.  When we got to the park to set up, it was busy as the weather was awesome.  As we drove around there were two men in orange sitting in the area I had wanted to use, as we drove around we didn't find anything better so we went back and I approached the men and asked them if we could use the tables next to them (I didn't know how to explain that we were going to do our own version of Thai New Year).  They said yes and after a few minutes they headed out.  We decided they were meant to save us our spot.  However my friends asked us why we hadn't made them stay.  That would have made some nice pictures with the kids!  Oh, well.  We didn't think of that.

We flew kites and then shared food which was all great--Asian and American.  We then floated ducks down the stream.  One Thai holiday the people build little boats out of sticks and place flowers on them.  Then they send them down streams and out into the lake to "get rid of their sins for the year".  We caught our ducks before they hit the pond however.  At the end, we did the water fight and flour custom.  On Thai New Year, the people throw cups of water on each other and then throw or slap talc (we used flour) on each other.  Now days this includes major water flights and hard slapping of each other with talc covered hands.  We did it for about 2  minutes.  Here are some of us during and  after it was over.

During "Water and Flour" tag

 

 

Next year we will do something Japanese, so start thinking of ideas, my dear friends who have lived in Japan!