It doesn't feel like Christmas, but Merry Christmas anyway! I'm far from home and family and friends and it's just a little cooler here. It's usually significantly cooler in Texas during Winter. Sometimes Texas has snow for 20 minutes before it melts away. I don't think it snows in Thailand even in the North.
At school, the Thais asked the farang teachers to come up with a Christmas program. We have 30 minutes to explain to Thai kids what Christmas is all about. But we're not supposed to say anything about Jesus. No nativity scenes. Stick with Santa and his reindeer. Actually, what we're doing will be fun. We're going to sing the 12 days of Christmas with Thai kids dressed up as each part. Mark and I made some very colorful wings out of plastic board and construction paper for the partridge, turtle doves, French hens, and so on. He even made beaks for the swans, geese and hens. We're going to decorate a milk cart wagon that will be Santa's sleigh. Zach will dress up as Santa and throw out candy. We'll teach them to sing We wish you a Merry Christmas and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer as well.
The Thais are a generous people and this Christmas season is no exception. I have received numerous gifts from teachers and students. One kid gave all the foreign teachers Louis Vuitton gifts. I got a black Louis Vuitton tie. Mark and Zach got blue and red ones. Erin and Cyndi got Louis Vuitton billfolds. I don't even teach this student. She just didn't want to leave me out. I know they are real too.
Sukothai and Mae Sot
Now I'll briefly tell you about my trip that happened ages ago. Sukothai is in Northern Thailand. It used to be the capital of the country centuries ago. It has many ancient ruins with large stupas (the inverted funnel shaped structures) and large Buddha statues. We arrived at 5 am in the morning. We rode a bus all night to get there. We looked around the ruins for a day. Then we went to Mae Sot and met up with a teacher from our school. Geoffrey is a British ex pat who teaches at Chitralada. He visits Burmese refugee children in Mae Sot. There is a church there that teaches the children because they cannot go to state schools. We helped throw the children a Christmas party. Then we went to a fancy restaurant.
Okay. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Over the New Year break I will go hiking on Phu Kradung mountain in Loei province in Thailand. Later.
“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke
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