So this has definitely been one of the most unique holiday seasons I've ever experienced after spending Thanksgiving in the Philippines, and now Christmas in Thailand , though it may have not felt quite like any Christmas I am used to, this will surely be a time I will never forget.
For Christmas morning we helped set up some decorations at the church for a Christmas party we had that evening, also that morning we removed the corn kernels off the cob in order to use it for feeding the chickens, needless to say not my typical Christmas morning.
Later in the evening we had an amazing meal of fried dumplings, a Thai noodle salad, rice with green curry, and we even had brownies. We ate the meal in the church on the property we are staying at, and the family we are staying with had invited many of their neighbors to join us, most of their neighbors are Buddhist(in fact less than 1% of the 60 million people of Thailand are Christians), so it was a really cool experience to see how the community came together even with the differences in beliefs.
After we had the meal, all twelve of the guys who are on my team this month sang a medley of ten various Christmas songs, then one of the guys Tom shared about what a typical Christmas for him at home is usually like, and Brandon shared the story of the birth of Jesus from Luke 2.
This week we are helping doing some work at a near by school, which is preparing for a visit by the Princess of Thailand, we will also likely be working on the goat farm and with the rubber farm later this week as well. In addition to that everyday a few of us help out Mom in the kitchen, it is always an enjoyable time to help her cook meals each day, Mom is the mother of Pang our contact here in Kanchanburi, and at one time had her own restaurant, so needless to say we are having some great food this month. In addition to being able to serve here, we are also enjoying swimming in a near by lake, freak out as Mai the family pit bull tears apart scorpions, giant centipedes, and pretty much anything else that moves, and are planning on going to ride some elephants later this week.
