Christmas in Thailand.

Christmas morning presents!

This morning I woke up to my roommate cooking me and my other roommate scrambled eggs and toast.  I wake up to "Sonya open your present now!"  I say ok ok let me get dressed first.  She says no I need it now.  I open it and its a toaster.  I have been talking about getting a toaster for a few months now but just never did.  Now I can have toast in the mornings!  And she needed it opened right then so she could use it to finish making us breakfast.  The three of us also enjoyed oreo chocolate donuts from a place called Mister Donut which is a lot like Dounkin Donuts.  After breakfast we all opened the rest of our presents.  My other roommate gave me my favorite candy in the world, watermelon slices, popcorn and coke dressed as a cute reindeer.  This was all before 7:30am when we were due to report at school.

All dressed up for Christmas

          At school the morning was reserved for a Christmas assembly.  Each grade level had a presentation of a song, dance, or skit of some sort.  First the whole school sang a few Christmas carols and gave a few speeches about Christmas.  K1 performed first.  The kids were getting very antsy so it was good we were first.  They did a song and dance to the classic jingle bells songs.  It was super cute but they mostly didn't sing and there dance was a bit off too.  But no worries as they are 4 years old.  All they needed to do was be cute and that's exactly what they were.  After our performance we went back to the classroom
with all the parents and took tons of photos.

The whole class

Jingle Bells Performance

Clapping that it didn't collapse!

                                                                          The kids changed and we were ready to have school.  They were so distracted and excited it was impossible to teach anything.  But today our "craft" was going to be making gingerbread houses.  Unfortunately we did not have royal icing so I did the best I could with regular frosting.  Only 2 houses collapsed!  The kids really loved it.  They assisted me in squeezing the icing, they placed the graham crackers, and they got to stick on the candies.  (This is when two of the houses collapsed.)  It was a lot of fun and I'm really glad my teachers listened to my idea and got me the supplies.  I didn't know we would be doing this today.  I kinda thought they weren't going to do it.  It was a great surprise to walk into school and see the supplies sitting on my desk.

The gingerbread making process

The 6 gingerbread houses (2 of which collapsed)

After school all the teachers got together at a western restaurant called the "Farang Connection".  We pre paid to all come and have a Christmas dinner there.  It was really good.  We had turkey, potatoes, vegetables, stuffing and sausage wrapped in bacon.  That was my favorite part.  I even somehow convinced the restaurant to give me two more for free! 

The sausage wrapped bacon that I was obsessed with!

Christmas Dinner

The end of the evening I got to skype with my family.  I watched them as they finished opening up their presents.  My mom received the game monopoly deal from my sister.  It is my favorite card game.  Naturally they wanted to play the game right away so I watched on skype.  We had discussed dealing me in and letting me play but that would have been too complicated and taken way too much time.  My uncle Tom came and surprised my grandparents and was also there.  It was a wonderful skype session almost making me feel like I was actually home.  

Although last Christmas I was on the amazing island of Zanzibar, this Christmas turned out to be really great also!  I am headed to the island of Koh Chang here in Thailand for New Years! It's about 15 hours away, taking 2 different buses, its the closest island to my city.  About 40 teachers from Anubarn Surin and other schools in the area will be there. 
Merry Christmas Everyone and Happy New Year!!