Adventures in Wonderland

The week before Christmas is usually a pretty hectic time. I spent a lot of time in the kitchen and a lot of time rehearsing with my students and fellow teachers. The students had to act in a christmas play and sing christmas carols in various languages. my youngest students were chosen to be shepherds and angels and to read the christmas story from the bible. Not only did none of them want to dress up but they were sooo shy to read in front of everyone, especially difficult words like "bethlehem," "judea" and "glorify." Though i tried to explain it, i knew that they had no clue what they were reading about. The foreign teachers also had to participate in a play which was chosen by one of the philipino teachers. I guess it was an okay play though very religious for my tastes. It was a talk show in which the host was trying to discover what christmas is all about. My character said that christmas is all about food (come on, it is!) though my actual answer would have been family and friends. anyways, the last person explains that "Christmas is Christ." however, when one of the teachers wrote it on the board, she actually wrote "Christmas is Chris" which was pretty funny. then we sang a couple of songs. hilary, natsumi and I sang along with kazu while he played that john lennon song "and so this is christmas." the notes were very VERY high so we ended up kind of shrieking along. the crowd seemed to really dissipate during all the teacher's numbers but that was fine by me. then the thai teachers came on and did a dance. finally there was a "fancy dress" competition. this is basically a free-for-all in which the students can dress up as anything they can think of. there were some christmas-themed outfits but some people just seemed to be wearing weird conglomerations of clothing and decorations. so we spent all morning friday at this show and then i had to go teach at the hospital and then go straight to the shopping mall where our students were to perform once again in front of the crowds of shoppers. it actually went a lot better than i thought and most of the teachers ended up hanging out and having some beers, glad to be finished with the whole thing.

saturday was spent shopping and baking cookies and shopping some more. strangely enough, i woke up on sunday morning and was brushing my teeth when i discovered that my tongue was black. well i just finished reading "angels and demons" in which the pope's tongue turns black after being poisoned so very wild thoughts began to fill my head. was i secretly poisoned? i know that i didn't eat anything black before i went to bed and i was contemplating whether or not i could have contracted some strange tropical disease. i felt fine so i just ignored it. it's a funny thing to say but i was very relieved on christmas morning to find that i didn't have a black tongue or weird malady. i still can't figure out what happened. maybe the cookie i ate before bed was burned on the bottom?

sunday i arrived at karen's early to help put up decorations. there were lots of folks there. everybody gobbled up the cookies and we played "sequence" for a long time. the gift exchange was fun...i got some cute picture frames. after that we all went out to More Tao. it seemed like everyone in town was there. everyone was dancing and singing along and we actually got up on stage and sang some christmas carols with the band.

christmas morning hilary and i opened our presents and guzzled freshly-made coffee. i honestly think i had more presents this year than last. maybe because i'm away from home and people try to overcompensate. anyways, it was great and there were many cool gifts. i would have to say the best are necklace with a krishna pendant made by katherine, the rainbow legwarmers from hilary and the scrabble boardgame.
rick and chan came over to exchange gifts and then brought us a Moo-gra-ta cooker. moograta is like a little clay grill on which you cook a soup and veggies. we don't usually eat it cause it's not vegetarian but now we can make our own! i was very psyched. we played scrabble and chan (the only non-native english speaker) ended up winning. hilary made up interesting words like "Eo" which according to her is the name of a wizard.

i spoke to my family for awhile. it was really nice to hear all of their voices and to just be talking to them on christmas eve. it was a difficult conversation and i was very sad after i got off the phone. i managed to cheer myself up in time to go over to rick and chan's for a late lunch. rick cooked a duck and tried to make gravy which turned out very strange. he also made sausages which ended up being hollow. i've never seen anything like it. they must have been overcooked. i was secretly glad that i'd brought my own vegetarian food.

in the evening we went over to nadine and la's. all of la's family came from the village so it was really nice to meet them. david dressed up as santa claus. unfortunately the costume didn't have a beard so it was pretty easy to tell who it was. however the little, little kids really liked itt and everyone had a good time.

today i'm back at work and getting ready for my birthday boat bash. i'm not sure what to expect but i know it's going to be a blast. then friday it's off to bangkok. hope you all had a nice holiday celebration and i'm thinking of everyone.