Holiday Season

It is the week before holidays hit and there is a lull in the office. There are four of us in the large rambling building that is usually full of laughter and conversation. My office is entirely empty. Yesterday, returning from a few days up in the refugee camp, I put on some music and kicked back and caught up on some reading I have been wanted to do for a while (“Writing Great Speeches” by Alan Perlman; “Teaching the Spoken Language” by Gillian Browne and George Yule; oh the exciting life I lead).

Today the sun is coming through the windows and there is a ragged moth with tattered wings climbing up the wall.

Most of the mad rush is over and in the past few days I have been methodically moving things off my plate with a great sense of relief. The busy sense of hectic hassle and anxious tension has been melting away into weekends of Christmas shopping at the border market and the sounds of carolers walking through the night.

Tuesday night was the annual EIP Christmas party. There is nothing like it to kick off the Christmas season. For starters, no one enjoys copious amounts of food, especially meat, more than EIP students. The smells wafting out of the kitchen all day were enough to make anyone excited. After classes were finished, the students went into party mode, decorating the classroom with balloons and candies, then disappearing to shower and “beautify themselves.”

We gather at the preordained time and wait half an hour for the stragglers but we don’t have too many guests. The party begins with the reading of the Agenda. First item: Welcoming speech by Teacher Jonesy. Agenda number 8: dinner.

Agenda number 6 was a traditional Tavoyian dance by one of the female students involving a large clay water pot balanced perfectly on her head as she swayed and positioned her fingers into classical poses. When it finished, she took the heavy pot from her head, scooped up some water in her hands and transferred it into the hands of the respected members of the circle.

I heard the best Karen speech I have ever heard given by a teacher at the school next door, the Teacher Preparation Course. “I have only one objective tonight,” he said. “To eat! Thank you for inviting me to celebrate with the highest level of education in camp. It is an honor to give a speech to these students. Now we should get on with the agenda so I can achieve my objective… and eat!”

Eat we did! It was a chicken and potato curry scooped up and eaten with greasy pancakes, the salty excess licked from fingertips amidst the moans of delight and the excited clamor of talk.

After dinner, the chairs and tables cleared away and the presents were distributed. Perhaps the one thing that the students love more than the food are the gifts. For me, the essence of Christmas is found here: in the anticipation you see on someone’s face as they unwrap a gift and in the joy and delight they show when it is open. We sit in a circle and there is so much laughter to share and so much delight. The students have bought secret presents for each other, there is a round of pass-the-parcel and a game of musical chairs. I was in stitches for half the night with the wildness and the craziness of the hilarity. The lights went out at 9pm, so we hooked up a light to a car battery and continued our games.

Nights like that remind me why I am here and how much I love it.

Back in Mae Sot, snuggled under a few blankets drifting off to sleep, I hear carolers singing “Merry Christmas to you all…” and think, “Ah, it’s Christmas.”

A few more days of work to get through and then the holidays will truly begin. I will be spending Christmas morning with a few close friends and a pancake breakfast. In the afternoon we will be having a large bbq with lots of people over. Then, the next morning, I am heading off to Bangkok and the islands in the South. I will be scuba diving on Ko Tao for a few days, hanging in my hammock, floating on the waves, dancing in the sands. I’ll be thinking of you all, who are marching through the snow, and wishing you all a happy new year.

See you in 2006.