MicahJohn

The last day of finals was Wednesday, now all I have to do is get my grades in order.

This weekend the ม3 students from my school are at scout camp. Tonight I went out to the camp to visit. For the big evening thingamabob I somehow found myself behind the conga drums (I’ve played music with the school’s music teacher once before).

It was fun, but a bit long. There was skit, after skit, after skit. I could tell that a good bit of what made the skits interesting was lost on me. I wasn’t picking up all the language and I was missing references to history and contemporary culture.

After a month of really weird scheduling, school is now back in gear. It’s good to be able to accomplish things. Though spending the time necessary to accomplish them, isn’t as fun.

Christmas day opened with a breakfast of fried eggs, ham, toast, hot dogs, and fried rice. Breakfast finished we piled into the tour bus. Our first stop (which came after a good deal of driving) was the longest dam in Thailand. I’m not entirely sure why we bothered to drive there. Sure a three mile long dam is a challenge to build, but all there was to see of it was a long, low, narrow hill with a road on top of it. There were people sitting at turnstalls to collect a bathroom usage fee.

That took up most of the morning, but on our way to lunch (back close to where we started) we made a fun stop at a sunflower field.

We ate lunch at the Chokchai farm steak house. The picture below says “Happy New Year 2552″ (the current Thai year is 2551).

After lunch we swung by a vineyard, and tasted some grape juice.

We then went to Khao Yai National Park. Khao Yai is the first, and I believe the largest national park in Thailand. On our way into the park we transitioned from the tour bus to five pickup trucks.

On our way through the park we saw a lot of monkeys along the road.

Our main stop in the park was a waterfall. It was good to get out of the vehicles and do some walking. I was getting quite tired of sitting down.

We wrapped up with night time spotlight tour of a small section of the park. Apparently elephants can often be seen. Tigers are rarely seen. There are some funky buffalo sorts of things that wander around to. We mainly just saw deer. We did see a baby deer and an angry mother.

This morning I got on a bus with fifty some students, a few other teachers, and the EP secretary. The first three hours of the journey the students sang karaoke. They asked me to sing. I said I’d be happy to if they had a song I knew. We finally found one, but by the time it came up in the play list, we were stopping for lunch.

When we walked into the restaurante the food was on the tables waiting for us. Every table had its own pig’s leg; it’s own fish; four loaves of Chinese bread; a pot of soup; fried vegetables; and rice. Each table sat about six people. There were a lot of leftovers left behind (This would be an appropriate place for a frown emoticon if I believed in the use of such things).

Back in the bus, we transitioned from karaoke to a VCD of some Thai television show. I preferred the (sometimes bad) singing.

We arrived at our resort around three in the afternoon. After getting our baggage to our rooms we were given tickets to use in the resorts activity area. I shot a few arrows (impressing the watching students with my archery skills). I paddled around in a paddle boat. I then watched others do things like go karts, zip lines, etc.

After dinner and a quick dip in the pool, I was asked to share a little about Christmas. I think that went pretty well. I spent a lot of time chasing questions down rabbit trails. Thai people in general are not nearly so familiar with the basics of the Christmas story as American people in general. Unintentionally using the word “kings” in reference to the Magi, can lead to several minutes worth of near futile explanation.

When that was finished we (primarily I and Manoraj (who studied in the States)) sang a few carols. With the carols finished, we somehow switched gears to ghost stories. I’m a entirely unsure how that transition happened. The Thai ghost stories I listened to were not fictional, they were retelling of personal encounters with the unsettling, often involving death. A little strange for Christmas Eve.