Starfish’s Full Moon Party

Monday night we had a Full Moon Party at Starfish School. Since school was cancelled on Monday because of a national holiday, it was a wonderful reason to have a party. The party began with group games; the first game was to see how many pieces of clothing could be put on the body in two minutes, the second game was to have a balloon tied around your ankle, and while running around the room you have to pop other people’s balloons before yours was popped. The little children kept crying when their balloon was popped because they did not understand that popping the balloon was part of the game, so when their balloon was popped they thought someone was just being mean. The last group game was an obstacle course that involved spinning around a bamboo stick ten times, running across a balance beam, digging in the sand for a flag, swinging across on the swing, and finally, climbing a bamboo ramp to touch the top pole. For the most part, I think everyone understood the concept of an obstacle course, but the children still have a lot more to learn because they did not understand that it was timed or that you needed to touch the next person’s hand before you could go. After the group games we had several individual games for an opportunity to win prizes. The only catch was that the prizes were not candy, but prizes that did not cost anything (i.e. going camping in the tent, going on a bike ride, or pushing JR into the pool with all his clothes on). The last one became a hit and the following day I was pushed into the pool, but after I was pushed in some of the boys and girls wanted to go swimming with their clothes on, too. About seven children went swimming in the pool with all their clothes on and some of the maebans (house mothers) were not too excited about this, so some children were asked to get out right away. The boys, however, were not in trouble, so Lawson and I thought it would be a good idea to show them that if they lie on their backs we could launch them by swinging them by their hands and feet very far into the pool (sometimes landing on their stomachs). We also taught them how to tackle someone into the pool like they tackle in football. Back to the full moon party, after it was too dark to play any more games, everyone roasted hotdogs and sweet corn on excellent bamboo cooking sticks (corn is coming into season right now). When we were all full from eating, Richard Haugland explained to the children about what a full moon is and a little about why the moon is different sizes each night. Surprisingly enough, I remembered my middle school education, but I did learn that what makes a star a star is that it needs to produce its own light (i.e. the sun). As the children went off to bed I continued to sit around the fire to watch the moon and stars as the fire died down.