On Wednesday, we headed to the market to prepare for the Christmas meal. Since Thida is rocking it five days a week for The Breakfast Club, we figured she could handle the community meal on her own, too. She managed to serve over 400 people mohingya–Burma’s famous fish soup, and what she is famous for. Everyone was so excited.
At the market, we bought:
35 kilos of fish
1 kilo of fish paste
100 kilos of noodles
10 liters of oil
many bottles of fish sauce (Do you see a theme? It’s pretty fishy.)
6+ kilos of onions
And for Flour & Flowers, we bought 10 kilos of pumpkin & 50 kilos of flour.
…And more things I can’t remember. But our car was full. And fairly smelly.
The community began cooking on Wednesday and left the 35 kilos of fish in our kitchen overnight. Once again, we were pretty thankful for the door between our house and the community space.
That afternoon, we also practiced singing Joy to the World & Hark the Herald Angels Sing in Burmese with the kids.
That’s Stephen leading us on the guitar with one toddler on his lap and two hanging on each knee. The guitar is super popular with the kids!
After we sang and sent everyone home for dinner, one of the two-year-olds came up, quite upset about something. After help from his sister, we gathered this, “I learned. Where is my soy milk?”
Every week after Storytime, Liz gives the kids a small snack and soy milk. He was pretty confused that he had participated in “learning” the songs didn’t get a soy milk on his way out! 😂
And just to really round ourselves out, we went to a friends’ house that night to bring some Christmas cheer. They’ve had a hard season as of late, so we brought games and prizes and activities for the kids, and just made Christmas joy. Truth? A lot of us in that room really needed it.
Truth? We came back to a domestic argument that resulted in Stephen lifting a man out of his own home & take him for a mandatory walk/stumble around the block while I sat down to comfort a crying girl and a shamed mother while we all tried to get the other daughter out of her hiding spot. Not all of Christmas is storybook-friendly.
…But a lot of it is!
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