Merry Christmas everyone

25-Dec

Merry Christmas everyone! Well, I must say that being here over Christmas hasn’t really seemed like I was missing too much of the Christmas season that you would get at home. You might think that in a country that is reportedly less than 1% Christian, Christmas would come and go without much thought. Surprisingly, this country just loves celebrating for whatever reason it can. Our Christmas season here was filled with all the songs, red Santa hats, and Christmas parties you would find at home. It’s actually kept me quite busy this month and I’m looking forward to the end of next week when things seem to go back to normal a bit.
Christmas for me was a bit of a slow day. We had a Christmas party all day and night Friday for work here, then Saturday morning we had one for the house. Saturday afternoon me and Sarah went into the city to buy some bus tickets and search for some Thai learning books. We thought it might be a fun treat to eat some American food while we were there since it had been almost three months since I had eaten anything without rice or noodles. Christmas morning at around 3:30 I was huddled in front of the toilet while the chorus of “We wish you a Merry Christmas” was going around and around in my head. The burger became quite regrettable and I decided not to even think of eating American food like that again until I had to. So, I had a fever and stomach ache all day which kept me from eating much at all.
I mustered up enough strength in the afternoon to gather the Christmas gifts I had bought for the family I lived with last summer and headed into the slum on the other side of the city. I was supposed to meet them for church in the morning but they were pretty understanding towards my absence. As usual, I was surprised by the time I had to leave at how much we could communicate with each other with the language barrier. It makes the hours I spend each week studying the language worth it. I left the slums and went directly to an American lady’s house who invited us for a Christmas Party. It was quite a change from going from the slums where I was trying my hardest to keep up with the language to going to this lady’s house. It must be one of the biggest houses I’ve seen in Bangkok and the people at the party where all older and definitely seemed to be in a much higher tax bracket than me and my compadres in the slum. The food at the party was sliced ham, different cheeses, breads, cookies, etc. It was really nice, though I stuck to the curry seeing as how it was the first time I had eaten all day.
Well, I hope that your Christmas goes well and I look forward to hearing from all of you!