Christmas at Watmethang Karawas

Christmas is usually such a beautiful, blissful time of year. The weather turns to a state  requiring boots & scarves, the lights comes out on houses at night, people grow friendlier each day as the certain vacation time approaches, and general merriment fills the air. 

Turns out that state of bliss is a cultural thing, not a global thing. 

In Thailand, as Christmas approached, the weather stayed hot enough for me to sweat through all my clothing, there aren’t really houses to put lights on, and the teachers surrounding me grew more and more anxious as the days until Christmas dwindled. You see, as teachers from English speaking countries, we were required to take on the task of presenting Christmas to a school of Buddhist Thai children. 

Initially, we were told we would not have to teach classes on December 25th. That moment of relief was quickly replaced by stress as the next sentence was, “Instead you will put on a day of Christmas activities for all the grades.” In true Thai fashion, we all put off planning the day until the week before. The result: a Christmas carnival of chaos. 

Before the chaos, on Christmas Eve, I received a very special present; my sister Nicki came to Phrae! Nicki was visiting Thailand for 10 days, she would spend three days in my town, and then we’d hop on a bus & a ferry to vacation on the glorious island of Koh Samet for five days. But she really had to earn that vacation before enjoying it. Since I’m such a good sister, and because she’d taught in Thailand before, I roped Nicki into helping out with the Christmas Carnival on Christmas Day. 

The day started with the usual morning assembly, but with the addition of all of us English teachers singing Christmas carols in front of the whole school with the special appearance of Santa Claus (one of the older American English teachers had a Santa suit made for the occasion). Then we split off into our stations at the Christmas Carnival. Nicki & I manned the Santa Sack Races. I came up with the idea for the station...and I’m not too proud to admit it was a total flop. The idea was to have five lines of 24 students, each with a sack (pillow case), and then the student at the front of the line would hop in the bag, run to grab a present (wrapped empty box) about 5 yards away, put the present in their sack, and hop back to pass off the sack to the next student in line. Turns out this is a very dangerous game. Students were tripping left and right, smacking their bodies on the ground, and fighting to continue to complete the race. Nicki pointed out that the students didn’t have the good sense to put their hands out when they fell, rather they held tight to the sacks and let their bellies and knees take the brunt of the fall. It was horrible and hilarious all in one. After a morning of 1st-3rd graders racing their hearts out, the pillow case sacks and empty presents were absolutely destroyed. During lunch, all the English teachers regathered, haggard and beaten, to discuss the morning. Most of us decided we needed a revamp. So for the afternoon of 4th-6th graders, Nicki & I hosted a Christmas carol singing and dancing station, which really just meant we spent the allotted 20 minutes per group splitting the kids up into circles of 10 and then individually explaining the rules. This was also a bust, but it was a great station in terms of crowd control, which counts as a success in my book. 

At the end of Christmas Day at Watmethang Karawas, we were all exhausted. Attempting to teach a Christian holiday to 1555 Buddhist students in a language that is not their own was more than difficult. But somehow, through a Christmas miracle, we managed to survive the day and truly earned our five day beach getaway.

Oh! I completely forgot the best part of this chaotic day. After nearly 6 hours of Christmas Carnival-ing, everyone was tuckered out and even the kids were losing steam. The solution: a school-wide dance party to Gangnam Style. Literally everyone was dancing--students, Thai teachers, English teachers, Nicki--and loving it. It was a redeeming moment in an overall chaotic day.