sour.spicy.salty.sweet: a celebration (?) and karaoke at school

Two weeks ago - back when I was enduring an internet-free existence - we apparently had some sort of festival/celebration day at school. I showed up at 8:30 (the time class is scheduled to start) that Tuesday morning to find an empty classroom. Now, this is normal, but the kids usually trickle in over the next 20 minutes or so.. this day I didn't have a single student for 40 minutes. it did seem to me that the sounds of squealing children coming from the courtyard were particularly loud so i went to investigate. it took very little time to discover that I had, unsurprisingly, missed a memo about some sort of school-wide activity today. but this is normal here. Communication (at least with those of us who don't speak much Thai) isn't one of our school's strong points - so I did what I do every day when one of my students (no, not the administration or even a fellow teacher) informs me of some major schedule change, or when I get ushered into a waiting van first thing in the morning with no comprehensible explanation... i shrugged my shoulders, smiled and pretended to understand what was going on

I'm still not exactly sure what was happening that day, but there was some good fresh coconut ice cream served in the typical fluffy white hot dog bun and an awesome show in which the kids dressed up and sang karaoke on stage for the entire school.