Well sorry it has taken a few days for me to catch you up. So last Thursday was Thanksgiving and last weekend was a great celebration of it. But as always, let's start at the beginning.
Last Thursday was a very emotional day for me. For the past two weeks, my emotions have been building up and the holiday just pushed it further. I was at work, having just a normal work day. When I left for the bathroom, I came back to my desk decorated by Indian headbands from my Mat. 3 kids (the girls, I am sure). It was so touching. That evening I had a small celebration at the French restaurant outside of town, with two of my friends. A few of my other local friends could not attend for various work reasons or due to illness. Still, it was nice. I ate heavenly mashed potatoes, had real salad with real dressing and wine. And bread with BUTTER! It was sweet. Oh and Robert, the french owner, played American country music in celebration, just for me. I didn't even ask!
Then, Friday, I was itching all day to get going to Bang Mun Nak for a larger farang gathering. I was waiting on a friend from Lampang to come down to Uttaradit and then we would travel down by night train to Bang Mun Nak. Let's just say Thai time makes us sad. His bus ran really late and the train, for the first time in history, was early. We missed the train by eight minutes. EIGHT MINUTES!!! Well, then we just hunkered down at my place for the night and picked up the first early train in the morning (which was mere hours from our original train time). We spent most of those hours talking and enjoying some farang company. I realized that I have barely left Uttaradit for 2 months and not getting to visit my fellow farang friends was wearing at me. But for Friday night I had someone to talk to and we shared plenty of stories.
Bright and early Saturday morning we got on our motorbike taxis to the train station and got on our first train (yep, first time for both of us in Thailand). It was 10 minutes late. Yeah, this is our luck, always. The train was actually really nice, though as I say this, I realize that my standards of nice have changed. Sure, there were bugs, soot coming in the very wide, open windows, the seats narrow and small and generally everything was dirty, but really, I swear it was really nice and enjoyable. The weather was great, the scenery beautiful, it was less bumpy than a bus, though when it decides leaning around turns, it is a little........yeah. This is what I said: "Sooooo, the train is sideways now. That's cool, I guess." We learned realllllllly quickly not to stick anything out the windows (practically both sides of the train cars were solid, open windows). Rails and the like would come up really quick and if, say, your face or hand were sticking out, it would be mush. Prior to my friend's head nearly getting cut off, I was going to stick a hand out the window. Lesson learned. We made really good time and arrived before noon.
Our friend picked us up at the station and we walked a short distance to her house. Yeah, you heard me, she has a house she shares with some of the other farang in the town. Lucky. It was really nice. There were hugs and tears and we immediately got on snacking, preparing food, telling stories and singing songs. We went to a ma and pa shop to get eggs and snacks which is where I had my first salty egg. Not so tasty. I thought it was hard boiled. I was wrong. Another lesson. There were the teeny tiny oranges (you know the part in Despicable Me where Vector uses the shrink ray and says "teeny tiny toilet"?) Yeah that is the voice I am using when I say these teeny tiny oranges. Sooo cute.
Then, we began prepping our food. We had mashed potatoes, a whole chicken (cooked by a stall rotisserie lady, not us), green beans cooked in a croc pot with bacon and onions, slightly sweet carrots, corn on the cob we husked ourselves, and fruit salad. Oh and 7-11 wine, classily drunk in whatever drinking object we could find (which turned out in some cases to be small mason jars). Our grace was simply holding hands and saying loudly together, "GRACE!" Then the food began disappearing rather quickly. It was great food and great to have a meal where plates were passed around and you don't eat off of everyone's plates. I mean, I have gotten used to it and don't mind most times, but sometimes it is just nice to have your own plate of food. After gorging ourselves, we sat talking for a while. One of the women there is not one of the Americans that I came over with, but rather a Brit from a different company. She is a linguist and her humor was great. When our bellies had a little room, we made a peach concoction from a jar of peaches, syrup, vanilla, and cinnamon. It made the place smell great and tasted lovely as well.
After our tasty dessert, we began singing Christmas songs and dancing. We were waiting until midnight, upon our new British friend's suggestion, that we put up the tiny Christmas tree at midnight because then it would really be December 1st. We also played The Game of Things, which was fun, though having a linguist playing in that game, even one who just met us, made the game a little lopsided. Still fun though. It was amazing how lots of the answers were Thailand related. But finally, midnight arrived. I had given the mini tree and small ball decorations to my friends in Bang mun Nak for Christmas and so we all put up the very small (like foot tall), tree and small balls on the tree. Then we twirled some toilet paper to wrap the tree with and shredded some more toilet paper to make little snow on it. Ironically, it had been placed on a stool under a Thailand flag hanging in the common room. Of course, we then needed pictures to commemorate the occasion and decided upon awkward family photos. Took us a few tries to get the camera timer okay, but I think our awkward family photo is amazing. I think I will get it framed and keep it forever.
Now, the fun was not over, though at this point most of us were semi-conscious on various living room objects, like the floor or couch. But we got up to make dessert part 2, which sounded better in our heads than it actually was. You see, we had cherry pie filling and cookie dough mix. So we thought to mix the two up and cook it a bit in the wok. Bad idea. Folks, don't try this at home. Looks pretty bad, tastes not so pleasant and leaves a sticky mess. But hey, it sounded good. With that little bit of laughter and mistake we crashed.
The next morning we finished cleaning our mess and went on a search for eggs to make pancakes with. Pancakes were made to the sounds of Christmas music, friendly laughter and more dancing. We were jamming out. We did pancakes Thai-style (so all stacked up in a pile, smothered in syrup, each of us with a fork or spoon and go at it!) Oh and we had hot cocoa. Like Swiss Miss hot cocoa. Yeah. It was fantastic. But finally it was time to head back. So on the train it was again. I traveled with my friend to Lampang since I had an extended weekend and hung out and met more farang people in Lampang. And I got to go to farang trivia again. I seem to always be there for farang trivia! Oh and they have this giant Christmas tree and huge snow globe and snowflake decorations outside of the mall there. It was beautiful. I will be back up in Lampang for the farang Christmas celebration and I will take pictures. So yep! Tons of fun, tons of crazy. Tons of memories, laughter and a few tears. It was a good Thanksgiving, Thai-style.
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