Christmas Catwalk

This Christmas season was whirlwind of emotions and preparations, which reached their peak on the 24th.

It started out with an my amazing success in creating my families traditional Christmas sauerkraut soup (one of the first dishes I have ever made all by myself, thought that's not even completely true since I had Rachel's help). After that I went off to school to teach my last 2 hours of English before the holidays.
I gave both of my classes lollipops for Christmas, and on Friday it was my 7^th grade that received them. They were all so excited, it was wonderful to see. In the “West” I doubt that you'd even get a smile from a kid if you gave them one small lollipop, here it was worthy of a big round of applause. Two girls gave me a pretty headband right away, and I received three wrapped Christmas presents from different groups of my students the next week.

Back at home the preparations started to reach heightened frenzy. After supper and a short movie all the kids (including a neighbor kid and Ream's nieces and nephews who came to sleep over) were sent upstairs to bed early while us adults (hihi I like to call myself an adult) started to decorate the room, hang up 50 stockings, fill up said 50 stockings, and arrange 50 bags full of presents and over 50 Christmas-shoe-boxes around the Christmas tree. We were finished around 10:30 and I was completely exhausted.

The next morning started merrily at 4:45am when all the kids got up. I hurried downstairs and waited there to watch the kids come down one by one to peer through the locked door into the dark room lit only by the blinking and twinkling Christmas tree and all the presents, to which, I almost forgot to mention, the keyboard and bikes belonged that my relatives donated.



At around 5 in the morning



It was so fun to see them come down and plaster themselves on the glass door, trying to peer inside. Kit, Ream, the staff and the rest of the volunteers had done an amazing job setting everything up. When you saw it with the lights on it resembled every child's Christmas dream.

 Some of my relatives donated money for a keyboard, violin and 4 bikes, which the kids could already see through the door. They were asking: "Are they a present too?" I said yes and said that they were really excited about it.
Now remembering my not too distant childhood I was sure that the presents would be opened the second the door was opened, but boy was I wrong. The door was opened at 6am and we actually started to open the presents at 9am, three hours later. In those three hours, they ate breakfast and did chores. Each and every girl got makeup put on (most were done by me) and most had there hair either straightened, crimped, or curled. All the kids looked so beautiful (especially the girls of course). There are some that have a pretty low self-esteem and always dress in plain, baggy clothes, but for the occasion they all dressed up and it was one of the most beautiful sights I've seen, especially matched with the radiant smiles on their faces. Of course they were all aware of how good they looked and were determined not to let such beauty pass away uncaptured. The capturing required an hour and half long (at least it felt that long) photo shoot in front of the Christmas tree (done by Kit), with parallel photo shoots taken with Alicia's, Neal's and Rachel's and my camera. Everybody had to have a picture with everybody, and of course a number of pictures just of themselves from every possible angle. Here are just few of the pictures that were taken.

All the girls, all so beautiful

All our handsome boys

The whole group, with the pale white people ;)

Rachana and Own





Rachana with Lor

Borin and Chanda

Chanda, Rachel, Alicia, S'dung and I

Alicia and I, aren't we pretty? ;)

Borin and I

Me with Vaneck, Chantrian, Chanda and Nygt

Me with Sambat and Nop

  Here are a few pictures of my buddies, some of our boys that I have been hanging out with a lot.

Tate

Chow

Tea




Pich, a neighbor boy,  not actually one of our kids, but he hangs out with our kids so much that he feels like part of the family, and of course Lisa, Ream's niece, who tried to but her way into every picture she could



This is the only picture I could get with Tong, which required me to get him into a headlock first. He's kinda shy sometimes, and at the age when it's not cool to take a picture with a girl, but he got no sympathy from me



Alicia and Long and me and Nop, our little guys

Lor with Ngyt

Who wouldn't want to open up this present?

When I was considering starting a mutinous charge towards the presents, we finally all sat down and started the gift-giving. Each kid  (starting with the youngest) went forward picked out a present and handed it to the child whose name was on it. It was really sweet to see them give gifts to each other.

They began with the Christmas-shoe-boxes. They were part of a project called Operation Christmas child, which sent out nearly 1.2 millions shoe boxes filled with presents to needy children around the world last year. The kids were really excited about them, the undies and boxers that some boxes contained provided for a lot of laughs too ;).

hihihihi

After that they each got a bag with individual gifts that Kit and Ream bought with money from the sponsors, and then they got their stocking (this is the first year they've had stockings, which were a labor of love made by Alicia, Rachel and Chanda, one the workers). They were filled with candies and little presents that my family and a few friends from Germany  had lovingly bought for each child.

The staff also each got a stocking

Altogether the kids did pretty well this year, and it was a joyous experience. Just think of any Christmas you've spent with unspoiled children who were genuinely excited and thankful and multiply it by 10, 20, or 40 and you'll have our Christmas.

Pich all suited up with the gifts from the Christmas boxes





My family and friends had sent me some presents and it was really nice to be able open up with the kids.

Reading the nice cards from my friends

Here are two pictures of some of the kids wearing the necklaces my family sent.

Kyo and Wot

Yong

After the present opening the kids went up with their loot, the girls reapplied their makeup, changed their outfit and then went down after a while for lunch.

In the afternoon we played games,

Trying to pop each other's balloon

A throwing game with water balloons

Trying not to drop the balloon held in between them

celebrated the birthday kids from the last few months,

and some kids helped decorate the church for the next day. In the evening some music was put on and the younger kids all started to dance. These are all kids who I mostly see running around, catching fish in the mud with their hands,  and riding their bikes to school in their cute little uniforms, so it was somewhat shocking to see how good they were at western-style dancing. The little boys would come strutting in with sunglasses on, trying to worm their way into circles of dancing girls. Some of the little boys aren't half bad at break dancing either. After a while they turned they traditional Khmer music on, and they all started the Khmer dancing. With my extremely limited knowledge, I'd say that there seem to be a certain number of dances that fit to certain style of songs, most of them are danced alone, but there is one that is danced with a partner that reminded me of a kind of samba. Most of the focus seems to be on the hands, which are moved in a certain way, while steps forward and backward are taken, but always moving slowly forward in a circle. Well I've just realized that my explanation made no sense what so ever, and will try to add a link for a video of Khmer dancing. Anyway one of our boys seems to know every single dance, so he always led the dancing and there were a number of kids willing to teach the stupid foreigners. However none of the older boys were dancing, and I assumed that they felt that they were too cool and too old to dance like that anymore, which was wrong as the next day showed.....

The next day was Sunday and the Christmas celebration at our church. Most of the kids at the orphanage were really involved in the preparations, as most of the program was done by them, with the help of Ream's nieces and nephews and a really nice neighbor boy. I had agreed to do a small violin recital with one of my best students, Tea, and in a brief lapse of sanity had agreed to partake in a catwalk-fashion show-thingy. Now most of you are probably thinking: “Fashion show, in which parallel universe does that have anything to do with Christmas?” That's what I was thinking when they first told me about it and asked me to participate. But I began to realize that Christmas in itself obviously has little to no tradition in Cambodia, and a lot of things we do for Christmas, such as Christmas trees, cookie baking, and the completely out-of place veneration of a certain St. Nicholas, better known as Santa Claus, really have nothing more to do with Christ's birth than a fashion show would. For them a fashion show is just another kind of performance, one that is modern and exciting. It was the excitement that won me over, and the fact that it way past dinner time, and I was somewhat faint.

Well anyway when I neared the church on Sunday morning my hear sank: they had set up a wedding-funeral-celebration tent, there were twice as many chairs in the church as usual and they were all cover in festive cloth cover-thingies (I don't know the correct name for them). It was looking like a really big thing, and I was participating in two performances which could end in possible public humiliation.

notice the serious expression on my face

While I was contemplating said public humiliation, the show began. There was music, preaching, and traditional dances done by our kids, who had been practicing them since summer.

Bowing at the end of the coconut dance

A dance just done by the girls

There was also a big nativity play with our kids and kids from the church.

Mary and Joseph Cambodian style with the traditional Kroma on their heads

A more modern worship dance was performed and Kit spoke about the last year in the orphanage shortly.

And then of course there were my two performances. The violin performance was painful at best. I was playing Jingle Bells in a duet with Tea, who has done an amazing job in the last month learning the song. However, as anybody who has had the privilege to play the violin or live within a kilometer radius of somebody learning, knows, if you play just a little bit off key, it sound rather ghastly. He had played on key almost all the time when practicing (which is an amazing feat), but in front of everybody, it just didn't work so well. Most people didn't know what song we were playing (everyone knows Jingle Bells here) and the kids said it reminded them of our geese honking, which is an insult to the geese. But I smiled through it, and the pictures looked nice.



Doesn't it look nice?

The fashion show was in the very end. I was back-stage waiting with my partner for our turn to go out. Oh maybe I should say something about the whole partner issue, the walk “had” to be done by a boy and a girl, and they had a very hard time finding someone, as most of our boys were too shy, or too small (I'm considered quite tall for Cambodian standards). In the end a search was made for one of the tallest boys in the village who comes to our church and I got Gcow, a friendly kid who's the cousin of two of our boys. Anyway, while waiting backstage I heard that there wasn't to much commotion going on, everybody was just clapping politely, and I thought: “Great, this isn't a big thing, I'll just walk out and nobody will be too excited”. Well I walked out and it felt to me like the whole building exploded: Everybody started to cheer, and our boys were whooping. The assistant pastor was kind of moderating, and his comments about us were apparently quite funny so everybody was laughing too. It was a very strange experience, I like attention, but being that much the focus was rather overwhelming. When I made it backstage I almost got a bit hysterical.

After the service there was a big meal for everybody. However we (the furners) weren't allowed to sit under the nice tent on the nice chairs, with all the other people, but were sent to the pastor's house, to eat, alone. That was their way of showing their honor for us, but it's hard to appreciate it.

After the meal, I headed back to the church to get the violins. None of the others came, because we had been told that nothing more was going on, boy was that wrong!!! Some western music was put on, and all the kids and the young adults started to dance. All of our older boys were dancing too, apparently, they just hadn't liked the music from the night before. All of our boys got into it, and Lor, one of our oldest boys, who's usually soooo shy, was getting the girls and pulling them too the dance floor. Then Lor and Rachana started to dance together, oh my gosh, really well, but in a way that you see boys and girls dancing in the west together! After a while they put in Khmer music, and then everybody started the traditional dancing. I like to think that I'm getting the hang of it. All in all it was so much fun. There's something about dancing together that is really really special, especially with all the boys who are always so reserved and quiet, it was amazing to see them be so happy and carefree.

As you can see I had an amazing, very unique Christmas.With everything going on I didn't really even get a chance to be homesick, I've also realized that certain traditions don't even mean that much to me, it's really relationships and time spent with people I love that's essential for a merry Christmas, and I had that in abundance this year.

Peace and Love

Sarah

P.S.(Thanks to Kit and all the kids who used my camera for all the nice pictures)