Christmas Caroling

Saturday, 25 December 2004

Woke up at 7:30 am, after getting to Linda’s house at 2:30 – 2:45 am. The initial 11 pm arrival time at her house turned into 1:30 am, which then again, after Thai time (I should realize this by now) turned into nearly 3 am! And, she and her husband were waiting up for me, since I’ve never been to her house before. I didn’t realize caroling would take so much time. But, we visited many of our teacher’s houses, and it’s sort of like having a “progressive dinner” where you eat different foods at each house after you sing. It’s really not that organized, but it seemed to work out that way last night when we started caroling at 7:30 pm.

At the first house, we sang a couple of songs, and then the owner of the house came out and the chaplain from our school greeted her formally, wishing her a Merry Christmas on behalf of Bamrung Wittaya School, then he gave her a Christmas card, and she invited us to sit down. The table outside her house was already prepared for visitors, and we enjoyed hot tea, hot chocolate, and hum bow (or manapua) while we visited and chatted. Then, we'd all pile into the van, taking some leftover snacks for the ride, and head over to the next house. Over the course of the evening, we had duck noodle soup, cookies, fruit, chocolate, pork soup, oranges, and dessert. Some people we visited gave us gifts, like this funky squeaky toy (looks like one for a cat), a clock, and a souvenir glass filled with cookies. I was amazed at people's generosity, and how the tables were all set and food was steaming hot even if our Thai time arrival was one or two hours late. Many of the houses we visited after 11 pm had their lights off, but as soon as we finished singing (therefore waking up neighbors and dogs - young children usually were crashed out in front of the television), people would come out in their pajamas and bring out food and drinks for us to enjoy. I laughed at Tik throughout the night, as she took lots of extra box juices, cookies, oranges, and chocolates, enough to fill a whole Big C grocery bag full of goodies from about the 10 houses we went caroling to. She said she was going to give them to her students she had to teach on Christmas day.

Christmas caroling was very fun, and it was neat to visit and see teacher's houses and some church and community members that we associate with at school. It was kind of funny to eat pork soup at nearly midnight, and then go to this doctor's house at 1:30 am and have cake, oranges, and a chinese dessert. When people asked if it was like this in America, I said, it's definitely not as formal, and although I had to hum most songs (all in Thai, except for "We wish you a Merry Christmas"), Jill and I were asked to sing some English songs by request.