Swimming With My Clothes On: December 25, 2009. Sri Racha, Thailand.

Christmas 2009: a day of unnecessary lunging.

What?? Huh?

We started off the morning having our English Club kiddos sing The 12 Days of Christmas in front of the school (We are so proud of them, it was just adorable!) And here's me on stage, totally oblivious to how stupid I look, lunging back and forth from group to group with a microphone.

Idiot. Why did I do this? Not only is it in photos, it's on video. I look like a damn fool. This behavior was so unfortunate. In my defense, I am like 2 feet taller than our students, and I didn't want to block them from view. After realizing I couldn't reach all of them if I was sitting down, I went for the lunging. Again, Idiot.

What. the hell. is this.

And then, it happened again. Twice in one day! On Christmas Day! For dinner, we went to Hard Rock Cafe in Pattaya (sweet) and they wanted us to pose in front of the sign. This is what I did:

Seriously, JD?

Awesomely awesome official Christmas dinner update: There were nachos on the menu so of course, we ordered them. Duh. Our department head, second from left below, enjoyed them sooo much, she already went back and ate them again! When they came out as our appetizer the Thai women had all kinds of questions for us as they had never seen them. Just to reiterate: these people had never seen nachos. A baby tragedy. It was fun to be on receiving end of food inquiries for once. They wanted to know what time of day people eat them and every single ingredient, and pretty much everything else you could ever think of to ask about nachos. It was cute. Needless to say, twice in 72 hours-- they liked 'em! I'm honored to have helped spread nacho love across the globe. Mmmm mmm mmm.

And I still couldn't completely avoid the lunge. What is going on here?

All and all, this was the most unusual Christmas I have ever experienced. From J Pop and K Pop dancing (yes, I know 95% of you don't know what this is) and ladyboys at school, Hard Rock Cafe for dinner and being in Pattaya on Christmas, to being filled in on American gossip from our Thai teachers. They know all about Tiger Woods, and Britney Spears, and Lady Gaga, and the stars of Twilight. More than us, for sure. Haaaaaaaa.

Below was the most shocking part of the afternoon at school for me. Can you tell who's a boy and who's a girl? It's not so easy...

The one with the tail (nickname Haru) is one of my students. He is a Kahtoy, aka ladyboy -- not that you needed me to explain what that meant after watching. Even though it is such a big part of their culture, it always surprises me how okay such in-your-face sexuality is at school. They are still kids! None-the-less, all of this was A-okay.

Below is a group of my 11th graders. Listen to that music and watch those moves. Yowza. Not a Christmas like I'm used to having...

The next video is the same group of girls as above with the boys in their class, and their dance was my favorite part of the whole show. Our resident student bad-A musicians are providing the jams (they are all mine!). I love the sound of the sax; it's so unusual in Thailand.

Some other Christmas-y things according to Thailand: