Surprise!

Thursday, 2 December 2004

After about 24 hours of waiting in airports and riding in airplanes, crossing the international dateline, I finally arrived at my school at 7:30 am this morning. Jun's family (one of my students who lives in a province near Bangkok) was kind enough to pick me up at the airport at 3 am! I slept in until lunch time, then figured, as groggy as I was, I should try to teach social studies and then our English club in the afternoon. I got my lessons together and headed into the classroom at 1:25 pm for the 1:30 class. Christy and Matt looked at me, and said, "Oh you're not supposed to be here yet." I looked, and there was this huge spread of food all over the carpet. They stopped the kids from finishing their work and said "Surprise!" Each child had brought food for a potluck (I wondered why Jun had mentioned earlier in the car that "these brownies are for you"), including my favorite Lay's nori (seaweed) potato chips, pork skewers with a sweet chili sauce, brownies, a variety of gelatin desserts, a cake made out of gelatin with carved gelatin fish, and pepsi. The kids sang happy birthday, I blew out the candles on my gelatin cake, and we had a feast (rather than doing Social Studies). You couldn't even tell that we had just had lunch an hour before! The kids pigged out! They presented a card to me; each child had made a birthday greeting and picture for me, and they binded it together in a book. Two students gave me stuffed animals, one of which is this huge red pig. Hilarious! Perfect for Nakhon Pathom! What a great birthday surprise!