The King's Birthday

It's a national holiday in Thailand, this is the King's 81st birthday. The Thai people love their King, His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Rama IX. It's been very interesting learning more about him this past week, the school had a formal ceremony yesterday with songs and tributes to the King. He was born in the US, while his father was completing his education at Harvard. He became king when he was only 18 after his father died unexpectedly, he was the youngest of three children, the oldest being his brother who took over the monarchy after their father died. Then his brother died tragically shortly after taking over the throne, (We have been unable to find out how he died?). It is a criminal offense to talk negatively about the monarchy so I'm wondering if that is why I can't find more information about the older brother's death? Because of the untimely death, Bhumibol was crowned king at the young age of 18, he is the world's longest serving monarch and is known by the people here as 'The Light of Thailand'. He has for the past 6 decades delivered a birthday address on the eve of his birthday until last night. It is huge news here that he did not appear and speak to his country, it's also a little worrisome. Many people here were wanting to hear him speak in response to all the political turmoil going on here. I wonder what might happen if he died when the government is so unstable at the moment? Time will tell.

We are all home for the day. Our driver and housekeeper have the holiday off as well as Mark. Mark gets 13 national holidays here, more than the US. We have Daniel our pastor's son coming to play for the day and then his entire family will join us for dinner tonight. I hope to get some holiday cooking done today and make some more Christmas ornaments.

I participated with a group of friends in an ornament exchange on Wednesday. I had to make 18 ornaments to exchange with little planning time. All the other ladies know about this yearly tradition and plan months beforehand, bringing supplies from their home countries. This summer when we were visiting in NM before moving, my friend LoriLynn Brock gave me a cute, little, wire angel as a farewell gift. That was my inspiration for the ornaments I exchanged. It is really hard to find craft items here, but I did manage to find some supplies in Bangkok on a recent shopping trip that worked just fine. It was a fun holiday happening in Burapha, the neighborhood by the boy's school that we considered living in, they were kind to include me. I'll post some of the pictures I took.