My favorite is the one where Santa's really a vampire who sucks the blood from little children, but they kill him by putting stakes in the fireplace

Christmas is this weekend, in case you didn't know (hey, it's possible), and since this will be the first one I've spent away from my family, never mind in a foreign, non-Christian country, I've been warming up my depression engine all week. I've got the tub of chocolate ice cream ready in the freezer, some escapist DVD's (Brad Pitt in a skirt can make anything better), and a book that I've never read but has a shirtless man on the cover so you know it's going to be good. I doubt I will leave my room all weekend. The fam is sending presents but who knows whenI'll actually get them, considering the mail is brought round by bicycle and the receptionists at my apartment building turn abruptly deaf and dumb in the presence of English. And considering most branches of my family have the procrastination gene in inordinate amounts.

Which, yes, they've passed on to me. SO IT'S NONE OF IT'S MY FAULT, IS IT?

Christmas isn't celebrated here, really, but it's acknowledged in a half-hearted way, mainly at Tesco and the like. (Tesco is the local corporate we-have-everything store. It's like the bastard child of Wal-Mart and Sears. I'm sure they chortle with glee at any excuse to take people's money.) Oh, and the lobby of my apartment building has a fake tree that plays the most horrible electronic rendition of "Jingle Bells" I could imagine in my worst nightmares. I've taken to ordering my coffee in my room so my ears won't explode. (I call it coffee, the menu calls it coffee, but really it's instant Nescafe, a nightmare even without the exploding ears. I need two creams (also instant) and a pound of sugar to make it palatable, which of course causes me to both go in to insulin shock and jitter uncontrollably for the rest of the day.)

Speaking of nightmares, several of the other teachers suggested I show the kids a Christmas-themed movie. I was SO tempted to show "The Nightmare Before Christmas," or one of those horror ones where Santa's evil and hacks everybody up with a candy cane, you have no idea. The image of little children shrieking in fright and having night terrors for the rest of their lives wherein elves in curl-toed shoes strangle them with colorful ribbons was sooooo tempting. But the conscientious side of me (it's small, but it's there) won out and I settled for coloring and carols and cheesy stuff like that. It's odd to teach about Christmas in a Buddhist country, but it seems expected of me. I just avoid Jesus and religious stuff like that, which is easy because I've been avoiding Jesus my entire life.