christmas in suphan

i woke up at 5:30 am (well, my alarm went off at 5:30--i finally, angrily, rolled my body into an upright position closer to 5:50 am) because we were supposed to be on a bus with some m6 kids (seniors) to bangkok at 6:45 am. my crappy mood, however, was almost completely erased when i looked up at my wall and remembered mom and dad had sent me a stocking, so in typical christmas fashion, i sleepily dug through the stocking and eventually found that traditionally arnold (chocolate) orange in the toes of the sock (thank you, parents!).

maddy and i walked down the street to our favorite suphan coffee house to visit panya for our morning fix. she made up our cups and insisted we take them for free--it was christmas, after all. at 6:45, we were on the bus, ready to go, then we waited for another 45 minutes because of bunch of kids were late.

thai time, eh?

a few weeks ago, when kanchana first told us we'd be going on this field trip, she asked us to prepare lessons for the bus ride. she was so insistent on these that she made tahsh, maddy, and i split up so there'd be at least one farang on each bus, and then she said we'd switch buses in the middle of the 2-hour drive down so all the kids could see each lesson.

then we got on the bus and the teachers put a comedy dvd of some kind on the tv and half the kids fell asleep. we asked kanchana if she wanted to pop in a christmas cd maddy'd brought, but she waved us off. so much for the lesson we didn't even plan anyway.

about an hour into the ride, kanchana stuck in a new dvd and some 90s-looking white boy band popped up on the screen.

"kanchana. what's this?"
"weslie."
"huh?"
"weslie."
"what?"

she handed us the dvd case and we figured out it was westlife on the screen, who i'd never seen before in my whole life. BUT this dvd wasn't only westlife--98 degrees and backstreet boys each had four songs featured on the dvd of music videos. so of COURSE maddy and i danced down the aisle of the bus to "larger than life," the performance culminating in a lot of finger pointing and emotional fist making at the end of the bus (aka the stage).

we got to safari (pronounced sufferi) world--not ancient city, as we were led to believe--around 930, i think, peed, and were shuffled off to a show. our whole day consisted of shows. it was bizarre. us arnolds will see maaaaybe one show if we go to the type of amusement park that has shows, and it's usually because we're tired and it happens to be convenient to see the show and rest. but the thai people--nay, everyone in the park, including 10 percent of the population of india--had a schedule, and they were all going to see every show offered. so our day went like this:

10 am: sea lion show
10:30 am: orangutan muay thai boxing show
11:30 am: elephant show
12:30: lunch is served to us in our seats at the elephant arena
1:00: eggs world (exactly as boring as it sounds)
1:30: dolphin/beluga whale show
2:30: spy wars show (terrible rip off of 007)
3:30: safari bus tour

no time for dilly dallying at this park. our school came with 100 people, which would have been enough of a large group to shuffle around anyway, but then it seemed like EVERYONE IN THE PARK was going to every show together. it was insane.

because we were late getting to the park, we should've cut something from our schedule to get back on time (5 pm). but nobody edited the schedule, so we left late and didn't get back until 7:30. i was super pissed on the bus cuz we had our big christmas dinner with everyone that started at 6 pm, and kanchana and the other teachers knew how important it was for us to be there, yet there we were, taking FOREVER to get home (three hours!), and stopping for gas for 20+ minutes so all the kids could go to the stupid gas station store.

oh, and then apparently the buses turn in to high school dances at night: the students turned all the lights off, flicked a fancy spinny colorful light on, bumped their (so super terrible) thai dance club music, and got down in the back of the bus. this happened for at least two hours. TWO HOURS. i would alternate between getting really frustrated and almost crying because this was completely the opposite of how i wanted to spend christmas, and just letting go of whatever stupid emotions i had because i knew crying and yelling wouldn't make the bus go any faster.

we pulled up to school at 7:30 pm, dashed off the bus, up to our rooms to grab our christmas wine, and headed downstairs to meet everyone at dinner. i think we had about 25 people at the table, and i have to say, in some ways it actually did feel like christmas. a bunch of other teachers came from outside suphan, so we got to catch up with them and nosh on delicious mashed potatoes (maybe carrots were in there) and meatballs together.

after dinner, i talked to family in magalia on their christmas morning and opened my presents (starbucks instant coffee and a jeopardy! page-a-day calendar--how well they know me), then everyone came upstairs to my room to do our gift exchange in white-elephant style. easily the highlight of the whole day for me. we ended up having 19 people play, so all sorts of stealing and freezing and shouting antics ensued. the gift exchange devolved into a dance session where tahsh taught us how to dance like black people (i'll never be able to pop, lock, or drop anything) and i led some dances inspired by tae bo workouts.

classic christmas, right?

i don't think i could've asked for anything better from suphan.

(wow, good job finishing a novel, dedicated reader.)