Bullet points & The Holiday Season

I've tried to start writing this specific blog post a few times. It's pretty difficult to find a starting place when you've let a month slip by (whoops!), especially when that month has been so full of experiences and thoughts that seem worthwhile of a blog post. Also, I finally started watching Friends, which has put a serious damper on my after school productivity. But I guess this is what every abroad-blogger secretly hopes for, that their lives will be full of so much chaos and, um, actual life that they won't need, nor will they have the time, to create a meaningful life with bi-weekly vignettes that, hopefully, convince themselves and family and friends back home that everything is hunky-dory-peachy-keen.

Thankfully, things are pretty hunky AND dory in my little slice of the globe. For the sake of bringing my faithful readers (...my family) up to speed on what has been going on, I'm gonnnnna riddle this blog post with bullet points. If you're more in the mood for emotional, paragraph-length blog posts about my feelings...well...read every single other blog post I've written thus far.

• Winter has finally hit Isaan, which means daily temperatures now hover around 80 degrees Fahrenheit as opposed to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Teachers and students alike wear large, puffy jackets everywhere they go and complain about how cold it is. The other day, I told a group of students that it was -6 degrees celsius (~20 degrees Fahrenheit) in parts of the US and they quite literally started to scream. 
• Not only is it Winter, it's the Holiday Season, which exists as much here as it does in the United States. Thai people love Christmas. Like, capital L love Christmas. Their malls are decked out with Christmas trees and lights and ornaments and have been for months now. I'm not sure they actually know anything about the holiday, but they celebrate it with a certain gusto that I haven't experienced in a while. 
• As far as what it feels like to celebrate Christmas in Thailand as an American...it's weird and a little awkward, if only because I'm not sure I fully understood how difficult it would be to hold onto ritual in a foreign country. There are no sweet potatoes for casseroles, no advent candles, no thick evergreen wreaths. And for the first time in my life, the world doesn't seem tuned to the same never-ceasing ethereal radio station with its looping silver bells and christmas shoes and croonings about snow and fires. But, in a strange way, I feel as though I am experiencing a more authentic Holiday season for all these small absences. As I reflect on what Christmas means to me as an individual, as an American, I've come to better appreciate the importance of taking this time to connect and celebrate friends and family. My days are not filled with watching Christmas movies on ABC family or running around trying to buy perfect gifts, but full of thinking about those I love. 
• And even for as weird as this Christmas might feel, I'm eternally grateful to the Fulbright program for the amaaaahhhzing Thanksgiving Dinner they provided for all of us big-eyed young grantees. At the end of November, all of us trotted back to our home base in Bangkok for a week of meetings and a lovely Thanksgiving celebration, full of stuffing and pumpkin pie and perhaps the most delicious cornbread I've EVER had. At least the best cornbread I've had in the eastern hemisphere. So much to be thankful for, especially the other ETAs, who are so graceful and so strong. And the free wine they provided at dinner wasn't half bad, either. 
• Speaking of the other ETAs, it seems like the only thing that is truly able to rejuvenate and reenergize me are the little adventures I get to go on with them, either when visiting their villages or exploring new parts of the country. This past weekend, a group of us, very spontaneously, decided to go camping in Loei at Puu Rhuea national park. It was freezing and it took forever and a day to arrive, but we saw the most beautiful coupling of a sunset and a sunrise, ate som tum and drank beer under a sky impossibly full of stars. I am grateful for the community of educators I get to be a part of. It's an odd crew, but a good ol' one. 
• And finally, the teaching, which seems to come in such lurches. This time of year is peppered with days off, so it's difficult to find any sense of pacing or rhythm. Lessons feels haphazard and all over the place. Some of my classes are full to the brim with 30 + students and some of my classes that should have just as many have only three or four because the other 30 students would rather skip school to run in the jungle or play football or go to 7/11. Those who do come are great and SO ready to learn, but when I only see each class for ~40 minutes a day once a week, progress feels like an inchworm. Time is precious and I'm not sure I know how best to spend it yet. Trying desperately to figure this one out. 
• Also trying to figure out where I fit in. The novelty of me being six feet tall and ghostly white and blue-eyed and English speaking has, for the most part worn off. I'm not saying I was hoping that my newness would carry me like a tidal wave into the hearts of my students and fellow teachers but I mean...kind of, right? Foolishly, I thought my speaking English would be my ticket into friendship, into closeness. It isn't and it shouldn't be and no Western stamp of value on a skill or attribute should ever be thought to be the thing that will win me intimacy in this country. So I pour myself into my study of Thai and it's not going as shabbily as I thought it would. Never having studied a tonal language before, I'm finding it hard to understand why the slight shift of my pronunciation of a word can drastically alter the meaning of the entire sentence, but I'm learning, as I should, as all of us who are doing work in Thailand should. We're cultural ambassadors, sure, but first and foremost we are guests in this country, and with that comes responsibility to not only learn the language, but to learn and appreciate the culture that this language symbolically represents. Plus I'd like to be able to order noodle soup at a restaurant without accidently asking for a shoe or mud in my dish. 

A lot of bullets, but a lot of things a rattlin' in this bird cage mind. No pictures this go around because I'm hungry and I've got a Friends episode locked and loaded and ready to go. If things sound muddled or confusing, it's probably because they are. But they're also good, challenging, but good. Will try to write with more consistency but I mean...

Cody