Christmas Party with Grapevine

I'm not sure if I have shared about this before, but there was a time before I left for Hong Kong for the first time that I worked with a volunteer group consisting of Thammasat University Students to go into a slum of Bangkok and teach the small children English. These events are orchestrated by a Christian student group called Grapevine. I enjoyed my time then and since I came back to BKK just before Christmas, I got to join them in their Christmas Party :)

I went down to Saphankwai BTS station and waited at the coffee shop that we always used as our rendezvous point for another friend whom I invited. After she arrived we walked to the church not far from there because that was that day's meeting point. I got there right around the time that the Grapevine people started preparing. They were of course surprised to see me, because I left out the fact that I was back in Thailand already to them :P so they did not expect to see me. The preparation included two things, walking through the whole day plan and rehearsal for the play. It was a Christmas play which of course was about the birth of Jesus.

The Rehearsal

I was the narrator of the story, so I got most of the talking part. I tried to go through it slowly as if I was actually trying to tell a story to little children. Everyone had a puppet in their hands and they would move their puppets' mouths after me and the other three voice actresses.

After rehearsal, we split into small groups of around 4-5 and got on taxis to the slum in Bang Sue where the kids live. One of the staff told me before that there were 70 kids that day, which I found hard to believe at first since I used to only teach around 30-40 kids here but once I got there, I can see so many more children running around and screaming like crazy. There were surely 70 of them there, perhaps more. It was a lively party and everything went well as planned.

We started with teaching the children how to sing Jingle Bells and followed by the Christmas play that we prepared. It went well of course and the children really paid attention to it.

 The three wisemen with Joseph, Mary and Baby Jesus

 After the play, we split the children down into three groups like we always did when teaching: small children, mid-aged and the bigger ones. I was in charge of the bigger children and as always they were the biggest headaches :) The three groups took their turns going through the games we prepared for them and were still energetic afterwards for some reason.

 Playing a game called, "Duck Duck Goose"

 Face and Body Painting

We handed out food, cookies and presents afterwards which the kids really enjoyed. The cookies are homemade by one of the volunteers which was amazingly good....I know because I had like five of them :P

That night when I got home, I was so tired that I just wanted to fall asleep right then and there, but it sure got me thinking that it was well worth it coming back so early from Hong Kong.