Another great Christmas in Udon

[ray23]

We have fun every year we bring the housekeepers family to open gifts, explaining the concept of the Christian aspect is a bit difficult. But they do have Churches this year. The is year we expalaind he Santa Mythe to them you know if you were good you get a gift in not a lump of coal.

They were confident they would get gifts so must not have gotten into to much trouble this year LOL

Kids are really what makes it fun. Poi was after me all morning to open the gifts worse then a kid. I made her wait until everyone was here.

They don't have a clue what it's really about, but understand it's important to me so they participate as I do with their holidays.

So from all of us to all of you

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

 

[tonykiwi]

That sounds like a lot of fun Ray

Happy Christmas to you and yours

Tony

 

[beattheswiss]

Merry Christmas to you and yours, Ray!

This sounds like a rewarding and fun tradition. Each Christmas I think about doing something for the less privileged, but my ambitions usually disappear just as quickly as they came up. Please explain me more. Our housekeepers are from Laos, but who knows...?

 

[ray23]

Well I respect and particiapte in the Thai Holidays, what they really know is this one is important to me, So we have an artificial tree. Everybody has lots of fun with that.

On the comuter I can find traditional Christmas music. They like singing Jingle Bells.

Everyone like Chrismas presents.

We have a nice meal, sometimes it' Thai and sometimes a farrang meal we make here.

I agree I think it's impsrtant to do thing in the community. Once I took an entire orphange to a 4th of July party through fund raising. Gave them the chance to see that for the most part we are pretty normal people. What I ran into doing this with the organaqztion, is it was all or none. Well altogether I would say we raised about 50K to do that. Had enough left over to buy some much needed clothing articles on a large scale.

In the end I gave them one good day through the generiosty of farrang and Thai alike, But really didn't make difference in their lives. You can only do so much.

So I changed my approach each week I give our housekeeper one hundred baht for each of her two daughters to go into a college fund.

Today they have about 15 K each and years to go before they enter University. Really a pretty simple thing, certainly doesn't hurt me at all. But it can change two lives. That as much as I can do.

So these days anything beyond that I limit to contributing to school rides or go, when I can the toy rides.

Chritmas day is Christmas day no matter where you are it's all what you make of it.

That time of year I miss my own children and not having my grandchildren around me. But I can still have children around me and see the sparkle in their eyes of anticipation, the joy of giving for me. That makes for a wonderful holiday for me.

 

[beattheswiss]

Good stuff, Ray! I guess it's a little easier to do these things out in Udon than in the big city (especially because your maid's family seems to be close).

We like to help collect money for fundraising drives. Our Bike club does a lot of charity. It's just that they're in Lampang, so we don't get too many opportunities to see the sparkle in the kids' eyes. We may join them for their Children's Day party though...