Christmas Day

 Christmas Day found Rusty and Tim at the new school about 40 minutes from our house. They had a good time sharing about the reason for the season. This new school has had missionaries volunteer teaching before, and Rusty really gets to have a lot of interaction with the students there. A group always takes him to lunch and sits and talks with him. It's great when a school has had a good experience with a missionary and doesn't mind inviting another one to teach!

 Rusty usually spends all day at the new school, but since it was Christmas Day another school was having a special celebration. So Rusty and Tim made it over to the other school in time for the program. Rusty was asked to choose one of the students for a door prize. Here he is modeling the prize. :)

 

 I spent the morning working on my thesis while Pawn worked on preparing the stuff for our Christmas party. I made it down in time to help with the finishing touches. We invited all of our students and their families over for a Thai bbq. We had 11 kilos of meat, several kilos of vegetables, and several gallons of soup ready to go.

 Then the students showed up first. It's kind of crazy grilling with that many kids and only a few adults, but the kids handle it very well. They do a good job, and I'm thankful they're all so well-behaved.

 Tim had a good looking group of kids helping him. We all split up and were at different grills. That meant I couldn't rely on Rusty to help me keep the conversation going. It turned out to be a good thing because I learned more about one of the moms that I haven't spent that much time with. I learned she's a professor of economics at the government university in the city.

 After a little bit even the parents showed up. I guess we started a little bit early for all of them to get off work and make it to our house on time. Then again, this is Thailand. They were right on time.

 I was probably most excited that quite a few of the fathers showed up. Usually we have good participation from the moms, but the dads came to the Christmas party at Antioch and at our house. We were very thankful!

 It never takes the kids very long to grill. So they soon moved on to the driveway to start playing some games. Atit had been saying all night that it was a special day so we should play Uno. That boy. :)

 We kept having adults show up so we kept two grills going the whole time. I think this may be Pawn's second supper. She kept up with the adults while the rest of us played games with the kids.

 After a couple of hands of Uno, I introduced the kids and 1 mom to Spoons. It never even dawned on me that we weren't sitting around a table until I looked at the pictures. It all worked out anyway, and the kids enjoyed it.

 Atit's mom came to pick him up and had to wait until he finished. The kids have decided that they like both games, and we can play either one now.

After everybody left we opened a few gifts. It's not what the season is about, but it was fun. Hope you all had a very merry Christmas!