Christmas Activities

It is now officially Payap's Christmas break, which means that the nursing dorm has closed and Sarah and I have moved into Esther and Gax's house until after New Years. The onset of break feels a bit like the calm before the storm to me. There won't really be much to do for the next several days, but once that is finished it will be time to step up to the plate and prove that we're really worth the investment. English classes for Payap staff and faculty are officially scheduled and I'm already itching to get planning for them.

But for now, I've been keeping busy enough with various Christmas and end-of-the-semester activities. The one theology student I have been tutoring took the TOEFL exam this week so we had some intense tutoring sessions in preparation for that. I can't wait to find out if she passed, especially as sometimes felt at a loss as to how to explain English grammar to her!

To celebrate her achievements, I agreed to go to a musical that was being held at her church. It was based on the book Punchinello, which I had never heard of, and also completely in Thai, but she did a great job translating for me.

It's been wonderfully cold. We've just emerged from three days of Seattle weather and I've been eating it up. After parting ways, I headed down to the Night Bazaar in my shorts and t-shirt, enjoying the fact that it was cold enough for me to get goosebumps. I went so far as to duck into Starbucks for a toffee nut latte. It cost me an arm and a leg and maybe a few extra toes but it was so worth it. Walking up and down the streets of the bazaar, underneath the Christmas lights, sipping my latte to keep warm, made me feel closer to actual Christmas than I have in two years.

And yes, there are Christmas lights and decorations around Chiang Mai. Christmas is pretty present here although I don't know how much a part of Thai culture it actually is.

On Saturday, Sarah and I found ourselves going on a bit of an impromptu trip with some of the nursing students. We really didn't know much about it except that Esther was going and thought it would be good if we came too. The only thing I knew about our destination was that it was a three hour ride out of town.

Our mode of transportation was what Rochell refers to as “the World War II buses.” They are these huge garbage-truck looking things with long benches in the back. We crammed ourselves into the corner along with 20 or so nursing students and heaps of luggage. It was actually kind of cool looking out the back of the truck and watching the scenery go by, but the further out we got, the windier and bumpier the road became. By the time we pulled into a gas station for a pit stop, I felt like I had been kicked repeatedly in the back after slamming into the side of the truck so many times.

I ducked into 7'Eleven for some snacks and was casually going about my business when Sarah came running up to me. “Did you see what just happened?” Nope, didn't see a thing. Apparently Sarah had been walking across the parking lot when two men with guns came straight at her, chasing a third. She thought she was going to witness a murder. The men with guns threw the man without to the ground and handcuffed him. It was a drug bust. They proceeded to place a whole bunch of drugs around the man and take pictures as “evidence.” Let's just say I haven't heard awesome reports of the police here. I guess a lot of innocent people are framed and Sarah was pretty frightened by the way the man was treated. Yet another one of Thailand's sobering realities.

And so we continued to our destination, which we had been informed was a rural Lahu village. The Lahu are an ethnic group in Southeast Asia and the particular village we were going to was a Christian one. The nursing students were bringing donations of blankets and things.

We turned off onto a very bumpy dirt road and it was all I could do to remain on my seat. But the scenery was beautiful and the views of workers tending their fields by hand were striking. The actual village was primitive, but not particularly impoverished. There were kids (tons of kids... and dogs) playing in the dirt, but they were all clothed well and had shoes. The home where we stayed had an outhouse, but also had a nice tv set. It was an odd mix of simple living and modernity.

Anyhow, the nursing students put on a bit of a program for the village and we got a peek into village life in Thailand, although Esther said she wasn't sure why that particular village had been chosen as it wasn't as isolated or badly off as others. But it was very interesting. People ignored us for the most part. Actually, even if we had known Thai, it wouldn't have helped because most of the villagers only spoke Lahu. But the nursing students seemed glad that we were there and kept on taking our picture...

Speaking of which, I did take a few pictures, which will probably show the experience more adequately than my trying to write about it. So I'm just going to post them and call it good.

The road to the village. 

The village center.

The house we stayed in. 

The Christmas program.