merry คริสต์มาส !

.
it's Christmas day and I sit here at school, enjoying those most classic of holiday smells: burning garbage, deep fried fish paste and dog. I'm wearing a traditional holiday outfit: flip flops, chalk-encrusted pencil skirt and school uniform polo tee, and my hair is plastered back with sweat from the December mid-morning heat. I woke up this morning and found that I'd received a special visitor during the night... in the little yellow box I'd laid on the living room floor, two cockroaches had come to take the poison I'd left them and were gripping to their last moments of life. I also found a pile of dog shit on my doorstep as I raced out the door for work this morning!

Yesterday, in celebration of the holiday (the Christian origins of which none of the children - and adults, it would seem - here are aware of) the foreign teachers were asked to sing a song for the staff and student body. we elected the mercifully short Jingle Bell Rock. As we sang, Santa (teacher ryan) threw handfuls of candy out into the sea of screaming children.

Santa and friends sing before the student body

Santa fends off packs of hungry students

After the morning madness, we spent a good hour presenting gifts (from whom?) to members of the administration and getting our photos taken, we had a talent show of sorts. The whole morning long, groups of reluctant students got up on stage to sing carols about the birth of christ and eating figgy pudding and folks dressed up like eskimos..

the carolers

Then the high school students performed the grand finale performance, which was, of course, a sexy dance number to a popular (decidedly un-christmassy) pop/techno song.

yup, the one in high heels, make-up and tiny cutoffs in the front is a fellow

Now I leave for a school-free week on Ko Phi Phi!

Thanks for the christmas packages, emails, phone calls - they made my day today! Hope you all have a warm, safe and fabulously food-filled holiday and new year.

Until 2010!
.