It is very weird to be preparing for Christmas in a hot country. It doesn’t feel Christmassy at all. Technically it is winter here and when I asked a member of my team what the weather forecast was for last weekend she said not raining just cold. Cold!!!’ It was about 32 degrees so not what I would call cold. In fact on occasion we can experience a wave of heat in the evenings. Last night around 8pm even though we had the fan on we came over all hot and sweaty. It’s so unusual for us as we mentally expect the temperature to drop once the sun goes down but it doesn’t here. That sort of thing takes us by surprise. So we do our Christmas shopping in short sleeves. The malls are decorated as you can see but finding actual Christmas stuff is hard. I wanted to make a decoration using holly but couldn’t find any anywhere. In the end I managed to get one scraggly little bit of artificial holly and constructed the wreath below.

So our decs are up – minimal as we won’t be here for actual Christmas and we didn’t bring much. The silicone star window clings are the most effective and small to bring! No tree for us this year.

As yet I haven’t heard a single bit of Christmas music or had sight (never mind taste) of a mince pie! In someways the lack of blatant commercialism is quite refreshing. Today we have a day off work which is brilliant- some public holiday but I can’t remember what for. We had guests for the weekend, Omar is the boys’ half uncle (its complicated & I can explain if you have the time) and his girlfriend Halima who are having a December break in Thailand. It was absolutely wonderful to see folks from home & to show someone around our new life. We took them on the tourist trail and packed loads into two days. We did temples and palaces and markets. We even fitted in a Thai foot massage (which we needed after pounding the streets in the heat all day)We ate sumptuously and I thought you all might like to see this fish stall we found in the market. And treated ourselves to delicious coconut ice cream which they served with interesting toppings such as red beans, pumpkin or sweet corn! We had peanuts on ours. All served in a coconut shell so no waste!We break up for our three week Christmas break on Friday 15th so not long now. It’s been a long and very busy term. I have had so much to absorb and learn, so many different cultural mores to negotiate and so many different approaches to get used to. I am ready for a rest. Might nip down to the pool now…