Christmas in February

As most of you already know Thailand is like 95% Buddhist and the other 5% is probably a mix of Christians and Muslims. In fact, there is a Christian cemetery next to the highway going to Nan that I noticed the other day. It was weird because it made me realize that I hadn’t yet seen any cemeteries since coming to Thailand. Of course, that is because Buddhists are typically cremated so they don’t really have a need for them. This cemetery was weird too, the graves were sort of above ground and they were tiled with big crosses on them. Strange. Oh, but I have digressed, haven’t I?


Anyway, even though the country is mostly Buddhist, Thais love any excuse to celebrate. While they don’t do Christmas trees in their homes or anything, they definitely know about Christmas and they love to sing the carols (of course). What I find to be interesting as well as admirable is that they do not see this as betraying their own religion at all. It is possible that this is because they don’t see Christmas as a religious holiday, although after talking to some Thai they are aware it is only celebrated in Christian countries. I just found that it was refreshing that they aren’t afraid of it; they embrace the things about it that are fun - singing and dressing up like Santa Claus.The Foreign Language Department put up a Christmas tree outside of the office a few weeks prior to Christmas Day. Decorating that fake Christmas tree got me in the spirit a little bit, even though the Thai teachers kept wanting to put the lights on going up and down versus around. They even had some boxes wrapped in paper as if they were Christmas gifts and I spent some spare time in the office making snowflakes and hanging them from the ceiling. The students were really into singing the Christmas carols, especially Jingle Bells, which could be heard at any given moment coming from a classroom or being sung by a passerby. The morning of Christmas, they set aside special time on the field to celebrate. They brought out the tree and gifts and one of the larger Thai students dressed up like Santa Claus. I read out loud the story of Santa Claus and asked questions afterwards, one of the best 3rd year girls read about Rudolph and the other reindeer. Some Thai teachers asked general Christmas questions and handed out gifts as prizes while Santa walked around throwing out candy. The teachers and some students sang Jingle Bells up in the pavilion and then came the big finale; Shaleas, Marianne, and I sang Silent Night in front of the whole school while Devon played the violin. It was beautiful and even though we are not great singers, it really brought it home. I was almost in tears. Ah, the spirit of Christmas!

The rest of the day was pretty routine. That evening the four of us cooked our Christmas dinner. We picked up a few roasted chickens and some corn on the cob. Marianne’s friend had sent some instant mashed potatoes that were pretty scrumptious. She also got some nice Christmas desserts that reminded us all of home. After dinner we settled down to watch A Christmas Story, which I had downloaded onto my computer. All in all, it was a nice Christmas in Thailand. It wasn’t a white one, but it was unique and I am sure that I will always remember it. Check out more Christmas Day photos here.

Thai Haiku

I can barely believe that I only have 4 weeks of teaching left. The time here has really flown by and I find myself feeling like I only got a small glimpse of life here. I have mixed feelings about almost being done with teaching. If you asked me Monday morning during my worst class of the week, I would say that I can’t wait to the hell out of here, but if you asked me Tuesday afternoon during my best class of the week, I would say that I need to stay here longer. Just like with so many things in life, I am feeling so many opposing emotions.

The other challenge right now, since I am in my last weeks, is to come up with new and fun ideas for lesson plans. I feel like I have exhausted most of my good ideas and now I am standing in front of an empty fridge, trying to decide what meal I could make out of a carrot, yoghurt, and some peanut butter. So, as most ESL teachers do, I consulted the Internet and friends and voila!, we have the 10 words game, which I have now dubbed Thai Haiku.

Thai Haiku goes like this, the students are told to write on the board 10 English words, anything goes. Once that is done, I split the class and each side has to write a story using the 10 words in order, one word per sentence. At the end, I review and check for mistakes and then I let each side read their story to the rest of the class while acting it out. I originally thought the game would be pretty boring. But, even for my low level classes where they pretty much just write a bunch of random sentences rather than a coherent story, I have found that unbeknownst to the students, they are writing simple yet beautiful poetry. Below are two of the stories from my 3/8 class, my best Matayom 3 class.


Words: look, book, cat, car, world, pan, van, table, postcard, flower

When I look at the blackboard, I can see many pictures such as a picture of a book, a picture of animals; I see lovely cats. I see the car that is driving on the world for buying a pan and a van. My friend who sits on the table tells me somebody sent a postcard with flowers for me.

I look out the window. I see the bookstore. I see a cat that sleeps in front of the bookstore. A car hits the cat. It is the world’s history. Then I go to buy a pan. I go by van. When I come back home, I put the pan on the table. I see a postcard from my friend. There are flowers on it.


I just think that they are so great! So, if you are bored today at work, try writing a Thai Haiku with your coworkers, you never know what sort of genius lies beneath all that boredom!