Eating Again and Again

Thursday, 23 December 2004

This afternoon, Ajarn Ong-Ard invited me to lunch on the other campus. His brother, the General Secretary of the Church of Christ of Thailand (the umbrella organization our school is under), and his niece from America came to visit. Aliza is 26 years old, raised in Oklahoma, and just moved here three months ago from Boston, after getting her MBA. She may stay here indefinitely if she finds a job in Bangkok. It was great to talk to an American about the logistics of relocating here and where to visit in Thailand. She is learning to drive the roads here in Bangkok (which is so brave of her as the traffic in Bangkok is horrendous!), so she said she could show me around when I come to Bangkok. Of course, she is fluent in both Thai and English. I heard she competed in the Miss Thailand competition a couple of months ago. We talked a lot during lunch, while watching a video of Ajarn Ong-Ard's trip to Scandinavia, and students came to sing Christmas carols for us. Gifts were exchanged, and pictures were taken, then I went back to teach the students in the English Program that Matt was entertaining while I was gone.

Tonight, P'Aot took me to dinner at another small school near the Chinese church in our neighborhood. Crystal, who used to live in our house before I came, was a Christian Volunteer teacher there this past year. We ate an eight course meal, listened to the students lip sync to pop songs, and talked to a friend of P'Aot's who is not happy with his son's English program. We encouraged him to come visit ours. Afterwards, we went to Tesco Lotus to shop for Christmas treats for the day's festivities tomorrow, and we got home by 11 pm.