Welcome to Students Incorporated. I'm your host, Mr. Jason. Join me weekly as my team
and I produce content that's informative, positive, fun, and uplifting. This podcast
is created and produced with the help of students from the International Community School of
Bangkok. In today's episode, we'll be celebrating the upcoming holiday season with a lot of
special guests and maybe a little singing towards the end. I'm joined by co-host me
and Frank today. But before we get into our festivities, let's hear our quote of the day
and get some headline holiday news. We have two quotes for today's episode. Our first
quote of the day comes from the one and only Santa Claus, the famed Saint Nick that gives
you hopes and dreams and most importantly, presents. He's quoted to have said, ho ho
ho, Merry Christmas. As you already know, Santa Claus' iconic festive greeting symbolizes
joy and good cheer. The hearty ho ho ho imitates a jolly laugh while Merry Christmas spreads
holiday happiness. Its origins stems from century old laughter expression and Santa Claus'
evolving depiction in literature and advertising. And our second quote of the day comes from
the ever so popular British American comedian and actor, Bob Hope. He's quoted to have said,
My idea of Christmas, whether old fashioned or modern, is very simple. It's about loving
others. Come to think of it, why would I have to wait for Christmas to do that? Bob Hope's
quote embodies the essence of Christmas and the relationship between everyday people.
While people tend to focus on the connection with others during Christmas, there's nothing
wrong with implementing that in your daily life, even if it's not the holiday season.
So my hope is that you cherish your loved one during this holiday season and remember,
it's something we can do throughout the year as well. And that's our quote of the day.
Now onto some headline news with Mia. Thank you for our quotes of the day, Frank.
Now here's some headline holiday news from around the world. Our first headline news comes
from the universe of cryptocurrency, something you may hope to see in your digital stocking
this holiday season. In the words of our researcher Toto, Bitcoin is cooking. On January 1st
of this year, almost one year ago, Bitcoin started off at just over $44,000 US dollars
per coin and at the start of this month, December, Bitcoin was pushing close to $96,000 US dollars
per coin and is now hovering around this mark. So in just one year, it's risen 133%. So
maybe buy your kids Bitcoin for Christmas. Disclaimer, we don't give investment advice.
It is illegal. Our next holiday news is about the ever so popular Christmas markets of Europe.
Based on our research, we've decided that the one from Cologne Cathedral, Germany, has
the best vibes. So let us introduce you to that. Though the market only has 150 stands,
it attracts over 4 million people during Christmas. While this is the best market in Cologne, the
city offers a few more Christmas markets, like one in the Old Town and the Angels Market.
So please don't forget to check that out this Christmas. And finally, our last piece
of news comes from Lapland in Finland, better known as the place of Santa's Village. We
all know the jolly man in red with a long white beard who's set to live at the North
Pole. Or does he? Think again. Santa actually resides in the Finnish Lapland. While he may
have a secret workshop in an undisclosed location, he moved there in 1950 to meet First Lady
Eleanor Roosevelt. Fun fact, unlike the fairy tale version of Santa, with just 9 reindeers,
the real Santa has over 200,000 of them. And if you ever feel like writing him a letter,
we might as well share his address too. It's Santa Claus's main post office, 96930, Arctic
Circle, Lapland, Finland, close to the North Pole. And that ends the holiday news for this
episode.
Thank you for the quote and headline news. We begin this first segment by hearing from
a number of our teachers and staff members about where they're from and if they have
any special traditions or activities they enjoy with their family or friends during
the holiday season. All right, let's get started.
Hello, and thank you for joining this special holiday episode. So could you please introduce
yourself and tell us what you do at ICS and what your home passport country is?
Okay. My name is Stephen Conwell and I teach grade 7 science and my home passport country
is Australia.
Ah, nice. All right, and next question. How do you typically celebrate the holiday season
and do you have any special traditions with family or friends?
Well, my wife is Mrs. Karen Conwell, as some people may know. And so that kind of makes
me a dual country person. She's Canadian and I'm Australian. So most of my traditions,
to be honest, are centered in Canada and with her family. My family didn't have any solid
regular traditions that we did growing up except when I, we lived in Australia a long
time ago. And when I was a young kid till about eight years old, we would go down to the beach.
My uncle would have a house and all the uncles and aunts and cousins would go down. We had
a, I remember having amazing memories down there at the beach. They were beach oriented.
But as soon as I met Mrs. Karen, her family did have a lot of traditions, including like
every year they watch White Christmas, which is a movie with Bing Crosby, I forget who
else, but it was just a real tradition. And Karen's dad would, he kind of sips on a little
bit of champagne and that sort of lightens him up a little bit. And his sense of humor
while we watch that video is just one of my best memories. He's just so funny. He knows
all the lines and he's just going the whole time. And he's normally not like that. The
other thing that they do every Christmas is they, they did this all the way since they
were little kids is sit down as a family in front of the fireplace, on the couches and
their mother, Karen's mom would read the best Christmas pageant ever. The whole book in
one reading, it would take about two, three hours and it'd be like cider and eggnog and
all these things coming and going, but she would insist that everyone sits there and
listens for the entire time, right? She was an old teacher. But that tradition, I love
that. It was something really special about that. That's, those are some of the, when
we go to Canada, I love the lights, like the Christmas lights and the combination of snow
and the lights and the decorations are really very different than in Australia. Like Australia,
it's very hot when you go at Christmas. Very hot, but I have good memories of the food,
like lots of ham and prawns, you know, those are just free flowing basically, all bright.
All right. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. You're welcome. Thank you.
Okay, we are on to our next guest. Hello and welcome to our special holiday episode. Please
introduce yourself and tell us what you do at ICS and what is your home passport country?
Hi, I'm Qing Yu. I'm a secondary mentoring teacher at ICS and I'm originally from Taiwan,
but I'm also a US citizen. Okay, well thank you very much for that. So
we have dual citizenship, right? Yes. Okay. So how do you typically celebrate the holiday
season and do you have any special traditions with family or friends?
Okay. Well, we've been, we've been live in the States for about 20 years. So we've made
many close friends there. So while we are in the States, we usually celebrate our holidays
with them. Okay. So like we would like travel together or hang out at someone's house for
potluck dishes, homemade yummy one. And of course, American barbecue is always a must,
right? Because we all love to eat. Yeah, totally. Along with the good food, we enjoy watching
movies, play board games, basically just spending quality time with friends.
Well, that's great. And is there a specific state or region of the US that you go to?
Because is there snow sometimes or is it a warmer state?
Well, we've been living in Pennsylvania Pittsburgh for 14 years. Okay. So sometimes we would like
to, you know, like travel to, well, like Florida beach side.
Go down to the warmer side, right? Right. Or sometimes go to California.
Oh, very good. All right. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast show with
us. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, and welcome to our special holiday episode. Please introduce
yourself and tell us what you do at ICS. And what is your home passport country?
Hi, everyone. I'm Mrs. Vicki, and I teach high school math here at ICS. And my home
passport country is the United States of America, specifically Colorado. Yes.
Nice. Thank you. And another question. How do you typically celebrate the holiday season?
And do you have any special traditions with your family or friends?
Well, let's see, I would say the holiday season for us really centers around Christmas, Christmas
Eve and Christmas Day. And as a family, as my like individual family, we have an advent
calendar that we do every night, December 1st through December 25th. And it's, of course,
now it's digital. When I was a kid, it wasn't digital, but now it's digital. And they get
to open a new thing every day. And we read a specific Bible passage every night, leading
us to Jesus's birth, because that's what we're celebrating at Christmas. I would say as a
larger, my mom started this tradition when we were kids, where everybody got a new pair
of pajamas on Christmas Eve. And I think it was mostly so that she would guarantee everybody
looked okay in the pictures on Christmas morning. Right. But now everybody is used to getting
a new pair of pajamas on Christmas Eve. And now also all of my kids expect a new pair
of pajamas on Christmas Eve. So it's the tradition that keeps on giving once you become the parent.
How many pairs of pajamas do you have to buy every year? Eight for my family. But you know,
we let Ramah handle some of that. I'll say it's okay. Nice. All right. Thank you, Miss
Vicky. Hello, and welcome to our special holiday episode. Please introduce yourself and tell
us what you do at ICS. And what is your home passport country?
Sawasdee ka. I am Kru Yam. I'm teaching middle school Thai for international from grade six
and two grade eight, and teaching the non Thai students beginner I have been teaching
here for 20 years. And I'm from Thailand.
All right, thank you. And how do you usually celebrate the holiday season? And do you have
any special traditions with family or friends?
For my family, normally for you know, it's a good time that we can spend time with family.
And my parents actually in the north in Chiang Mai. But then every year we try our best to
gather together as a big family. So we travel to my dad's hometown, which is in Mahasaraka.
And then before long time ago, my dad was the only Christian in the village. And now
he set up like he got to have his house to be the church. And then all like all the siblings
and our family became Christian. And then it's a good chance that we go and visit and
my dad have a very, you know, close connection with them. So we as a family, we go there,
see the family in Mahasaraka, like out in the countryside. And we celebrate with them,
my dad preach and my brother and me and I bring my kids to sing and bring the gift to
the people in the village. And it's a good time because normally we live in the city.
So Christmas is the time that we give what we have and we go and have a, you know, good
chat in the family. And actually, especially for my kids to see and play with the kids
in the village and eat like countryside food and you know, have another experience outside
of the city. And I think it's very good time. But normally, if not the year that we cannot
go, we go visit friends. Like if sometimes we visit friends in another country, but every
year we try to visit the family in the village.
Nice. That sounds really fun. Thank you for sharing. Hello and welcome to our social holiday
episode. Please introduce yourself and tell us what you do at ICS and what your home passport
country is.
So okay, what I do at ICS and who I am. All right. I am Mr. Micah. Students call me Mr.
Micah. Some people call me Pacman. And what I do is I manage the pack. That's where Pacman
comes from. Pac manager. So I do all sorts of things like manage the schedules for the
pack, manage the facilities in the pack and mainly sound and the tech stuff in the building.
Yeah, as opposed to all other events. So yeah, everything. All right. And Aladdin and every
show that comes. Sorry, was your second question again? What do you do for? What is your home
passport country? Oh, my home passport country. My home passport country is the Philippines,
but I was born in Thailand and I grew up at ICS. I'm an alumni.
Well, all right. Thank you. I did not know that. Yep. So how do you typically celebrate
the holiday season? And do you have any special traditions with family or friends, Mr. Micah?
So for the holiday season, being Filipino, Christmas actually starts around September,
which is kind of crazy. All the Burr months is when the decorations come up and stuff
like that. But we I haven't really done that as when it comes to being Filipino and putting
up my decorations early. Usually it's around November and not September. And for Christmas,
what my family does is we usually hang out together on Christmas Eve until midnight.
And it's actually a Filipino tradition called Noche Buena, which is kind of like waiting
for the New Year's. But it's like instead of the New Year's, it's Christmas. Yeah. And
for what we do for Noche Buena is we just hang around, eat. Typically, there'll be teriyaki
and various Filipino desserts. I can't name them all. Oh, that's okay. It's pretty bad.
Surprisingly, like I said, my passport country is Philippines, but I grew up here. So my
parents never really, my mom in particular, never spoke to me in Tagalog. We didn't really
grew up doing all those types of things because my father is Singaporean and we kind of had
two cultures in our family. But more recently, that's what we've been doing. We've been celebrating
just staying up till midnight. And then at midnight, actually what we do is we give presents.
That's when we give the presents to each other. So instead of waking up Christmas morning,
we just wait for midnight. And sometimes it's a little hard, but yeah, it is what it is.
It's fun. And then everybody goes home sleepy and full. Yeah. All right. That sounds really
fun. Thank you for sharing Mr. Micah. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Hello and welcome
to our special holiday episode. Can you please introduce yourself and tell us what you do
at ICS and what is your home passport country? Well, my name is Mr. Chris McClatcher and
my passport country is the United States. I went to school in Canada though for four
or five years and then I haven't been to the US in about 18 years. So even though Thailand
is not my passport country, I've almost lived in Thailand longer than I've lived in the
US. Thank you so much. And so how do you typically celebrate the holiday season and do you have
any special traditions with your families or friends? Yeah, usually for the holidays.
I mean, I'm a pretty big, pretty big homebody. I like to stay home, don't like to travel
much. So my wife and I and all of the kids, we have some traditions. One of them is on
Christmas Eve, we have all of our Christmas stockings filled up with food to rot your
teeth. And on Christmas Eve, we all open up our stockings. And then that's always our
Christmas Eve tradition. And then on Christmas morning, I get up early and I make breakfast,
a special Christmas breakfast for all the kids. They love fried potatoes and so I make
fried potatoes. And then we read through the Christmas story together. And on Christmas
morning, we usually open presents underneath the tree around probably 1130 or 12 o'clock
in the afternoon, which is very unusual because usually families with kids open up presents
at like 330am because that's when kids wake up. But my family has learned breakfast first,
the Christmas story and then we open up presents. So that's my usual Christmas. And on Christmas
holidays, I'm usually at home hanging out, not really traveling anywhere.
The holiday season often gives us time to reflect on the meaning of life, happiness,
joy, and the giving and the real reasons so many of us celebrate Christmas. That's the
birth of Jesus and the gift he has offered all of us. With that said, Rebecca is going
to share a list of practical things that can be done during the holiday season with the
idea of giving back in mind. And then we'll hear from a special outside guest about how
her organization celebrates the idea of giving back. The first go ahead, Rebecca.
Thank you, Mr. Jason. Yes, here's a list of five practical ways you can give back during
this holiday season. First, volunteer at a shelter or food bank, help serve meals or
sort donations at local shelters or food banks. Many are especially busy during the holidays.
Second, support a family in need, participate in adopt a family programs, providing gifts
or essentials to families facing hardship. Third, donate to a cause, give to charities
or local organizations, whether through money, toys, clothes, or other goods. Fourth, acts
of kindness, pay for a stranger's coffee, help carry groceries, or leave a kind note
brightening someone's day. Last but not the least, organize a toy drive or event, collect
donations for children or the needy, or host a community gathering for those who might
be alone. And that's our list of five simple and practical ways you can give back to your
community during this holiday season. And now onto our PSA announcement.
Could you please introduce yourself and explain to us what you do?
So hi, my name is Tetra Sakthi Redpanupan. I'm the executive director at Mania Group.
So our business holds two core businesses. So the first one would be office spaces for
rent. We have two buildings for that. One is called Mania Center. The other one is called
Mania North. And the second business would be the hotel. So the Renaissance Bangkok Latch
at the Seoul Hotel. Yeah. And we also have residences for sale called the estate residences.
So I pretty much like overlook at the whole marketing operations.
That's so cool to hear. It must be very enjoyable to be bird viewing all of those new projects.
So may I ask what does Renaissance do during the holiday season to give back to communities?
Okay, so the hotel's campaign that focuses on giving back to the community is called
Wish Upon a Star. So pretty much our initiative's purpose is to spread love and joy to 40 children
from the foundation for slum child care at Pan Sawai Khong Pui. So the way that our
guests or any like passerby can participate is by visiting our Christmas tree of wishes,
which is located at the hotel lobby. On the tree, there's going to be different like stars
on different branches of the tree. So each star will be representing each child from
the foundation. So guests can choose like the star with a child's wish and then for
the year and then they can choose to fulfill those wishes by either A, purchasing the gift
themselves and returning it to the navigator or like the reception counter by December
18, 2024 or B, by contributing 500 baht to the hotel and then the hotel will handle the
gift purchasing process. And these gifts will be presented to the children on December 23rd,
2024. Hopefully that's going to be like a very like fulfilling and heartwarming moment
for both like the hotel and for the children. Yeah. And actually I told, couldn't highlight
that like we don't have one for Maniak actually as a spot of one. So is it okay if I tell
you about it?
Yeah, go for it.
Okay, so for Maniak, we've actually just launched a market called Maniak Market. So it's like
our first ever, not a flea market, not a Christmas market, but just like a general market, you
know, in the middle of the city. And we'd like to think of it as a space of happiness
or a pop-up community in the heart of the city. Like I said before, the way we see this
as giving back to the community is that we treat ourselves like an extra outlet for SMEs
who like only have online platforms. So pretty much we provide like free of charge booth
spaces for them to come and like, you know, open up, set up a booth and sell their goodies
to like customers from the building or customers from the hotel. Yeah. So I think it's both
like for the SMEs and for the customers, they get to exchange like just a new experience,
I guess. Yeah. So I feel like that's a way of giving back to the community, not to mention
we have live bands every day. So some of the live band, what, how do you call it? Like
recruits. Yep. How can I put it? I'm not sure how to, how to... Oh, like busking, I
believe. Yeah. Yeah. Like, yeah. So we support them too. So I feel like that's another way
of giving back to the community. Yeah. Wow. That's such an amazing campaign that both
Manilla and Renaissance is hosting. Because as big corporates, it's definitely like so
heartwarming to hear that you guys are also assisting SMEs and these marginalized communities
as earlier mentioned. So thank you so much for sharing with us. Yeah, thank you. Yeah.
And as an additional question, would you mind if like, I quickly chime in and asked you
regarding like what inspired you to give back to that community mentioned and also for the
Manilla market with like the pink bar and all the SMEs there? Yeah. I think it's a matter
of, I don't know, I feel like at the end of the year, everyone like deserves a chance
to like be given like any sort of opportunity to be happy, you know? So I just feel like,
yeah, why not create like projects that can actually like give back to the community so
that, but I feel like throughout the year, we don't just think about getting like profit
or like, you know, doing like everything like that. But after getting like all the profit
or like the revenue that comes in, like what can we do to, you know, like put that into
good use for the society? So I feel like, yeah, why not like make some projects, create
some projects that gives back to the community so that it can be like a very happy holiday
season for everyone, you know, not just for business owners, but for like the community
in general. And at the end of the day, like after we receive that from, you know, from
our clients, tenants, whoever, hotel guests, what can we do to like give back? That's,
I think that's like the main part of it all. Okay, if I can help you with anything else,
feel free to reach out like at any time.
And we are back with our second part of this episode and we're going to hear from some
students about how they may celebrate the holidays with their family and friends. Now
their backgrounds are diverse and their passports are from different places as well. Mia will
start us off with our first student guest. Hello and welcome to our special holiday episode.
Please introduce yourself. Tell us what grade you're in at ICS and what your home passport
country is. So I'm Eva. I'm in grade 12 and my passport country is Russia. Now, what
do you find special about this holiday season? So I don't celebrate Christmas, but I enjoy
spending time with my family and just like the holiday vibes. I really like them. And
on New Year we give gifts. So it's basically what happens on Christmas normally. In Russia
people do it on New Year. So I enjoy like staying up till the till midnight and then
we exchange gifts and we still put up like Christmas trees and stuff. So I really enjoy
decorating a Christmas tree with my family. Just a little bit of follow up. Like why don't
you celebrate it like on the 25th? Like why like on New Year's? Well, I think it's because
of the Soviet Union or something. So that makes sense. They weren't allowing religion
at some point. So all the holiday stuff kind of got moved through New Year's. But people
still do celebrate Christmas, but it's on the 6th or the 7th of January. All right.
Thank you. Hello and welcome to our special holiday episode. Please introduce yourself
and tell us what grade you're in at ICS and what your home passport country is. Hi, my
name is Rini. I'm in 10th grade and my passport country is America. Okay, thank you. And what
do you find special about the holiday season? About the holiday season, me and my family
spend a lot of quality time together. So I think that that's what I find special because
three out of the four of us have our birthdays in this month. So we go out and spend a lot
of time together. Yeah. Hello and welcome to our special holiday episode. Please introduce
yourself and tell us what grade you are in at ICS and what your home passport country
is. My name is Adi. I'm in grade 12. This is my senior year and I have an Indian passport.
Thank you. And what do you find special about the holiday season, Adi? I guess coming from
a Christian school and a Christian environment, the holiday season for me usually correlates
with the idea of giving more than receiving. So even though my family is predominantly
a Buddhist family, every Christmas we go to a local church run by a Thai organization
and then we usually partake with them with serving them food, donating them stuff, a
little bit of sermon singing. But I don't know, my singing skills are good, but I try
my best. And then that's usually how I celebrate my Christmas. But in a more like intrinsic
way or more familiar way, we celebrate mostly by just watching movies and just staying at
home. Like we go outside, but because our family is Buddhist, we don't believe we don't
celebrate it in a very lavish sense. We believe in donating more. And so it's usually just
movies, some books, and we cook together. And my sister teaches me how to knit. That's
pretty much it. What, your sister knits? Yes, I can crochet to an extent and I can crochet
like, I don't know, like a bucket caps, but they're not great. But I'm a fractal. All
right. All right. Thank you for sharing Adi. Thank you. Hello and welcome to our special
holiday episode. Please introduce yourself and tell us what grade you're in at ICS and
what your home passport currently is. My name is Elise. I'm a junior this year and my home
passport country is the Netherlands. Thank you so much. And what do you find so special
about the holiday season? I think something that's special to me is just getting to spend
time with my family as we usually celebrate St. Nicholas rather than Christmas, which
is on December 5th. And that's the time where we just eat the snacks that our family sends
us and we open gifts. But now that we've moved to Thailand, we usually attend a Christmas
service at ECB on the 24th. And then we read the Bible story on the morning on the 25th
and just have a family breakfast together. Hello and welcome to our special holiday episode.
Please introduce yourself and tell us what grade you are in at ICS and what your home
passport country is. Hi, my name is Jason. I'm a senior at ICS, grade 12. I come from
a more culturally Chinese Taiwanese family, but my passport country is Thailand. Oh, nice.
All right, Jason, what do you find special about the holiday season? What is really special
about the holiday season is the large amount of exams and projects that the teachers choose
to all pile up at once. Especially this year has been especially special considering the
seniors have college apps, exams, projects, capstone, and a lot of other things. But you
know what? At least we get a very, very much long needed break from school and it's the
Christmas season, right? Even without snow, we can enjoy a lot of other things. I know
I'm grateful that Thailand doesn't have snow because I love golfing and most of the times
I go golfing on holidays. So since there isn't snow and the weather is kind of cool, that's
great. And coming from a more culturally Chinese family, we don't do a lot for Christmas. Like
we don't realize it's Christmas until it's the day of Christmas. Wonderful. And being
like 17, 18, it's at a point where you realize that, okay, maybe Santa Claus does not exist.
So if you want something, don't know, want something throughout the year and I tell my
parents, then they'll give it to me on Christmas day, like just hand it over to me. And I just
thank my parents for being the quote unquote Santa Claus. And you know, we go out and have
some food and I just go golfing and relax over the break, preparing myself for another
year of school. Woohoo. Okay. All right. Thank you, Jason. I did not know you golfed. So
that was very interesting. Thank you for sharing. Please introduce yourself and tell us what
grade you are in at ICS and what your home passport currently is. My name is Noel. My
home passport is Thailand and I'm currently in 10th grade at ICS. Thank you. And what
if I was special about the holiday season? So talking about Christmas first, I really
enjoy celebrating Christmas because I come from a Christian family and we give importance
to the birth of Christ and we also play snow sports, which is snowboarding and skiing during
this holiday season. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Hello and welcome to our
special holiday episode. Please introduce yourself and tell us what grade you're in
at ICS and what your home passport country is. Hello, I am Eunwoo from grade 11 and my
home country passport is South Korea. Thank you. And what do you find special about the
holiday season? Oh, what I found special about my holiday season is normally our family
goes to a missionary camp together as a family and we enjoy the Christmas and we have valuable
time and quality time with our family, praying God and having chapel. Thank you. Hello and
welcome to our special holiday episode. Please introduce yourself. Tell us what you do here
at ICS and what your home passport country is. Hi, I'm Mrs. Sara and I'm the strings
and orchestra teacher in middle school and high school. Also teach AP music theory and
I come from Finland. Nice. Thank you. Now, what do you find special about the holiday
season and why do people sort of connect the holidays to music as well? So I really love
really love the Christmas season. I love all the decorations, the lights and the atmosphere,
the mood and I think for me a really big part of that is the music. Yeah. So obviously we
play a lot of Christmas music in my classes. We listen to it and then I love to listen
to it at home, but it depends what kind. Usually a little bit earlier in the season, I might
listen to some more classical like more toned down music and then when we get closer, then
I start the jazzy songs. All right. Thank you Mrs. Sara. Hello and welcome to our special
holiday episode. Please introduce yourself. Tell us what you do here at ICS and where
your home passport country is. Hello, I am Mr. Christian and I teach band and choir here
at ICS and I'm from the United States. All right. Thank you. And what do you find special
about the holiday season and why do people connect the holidays to music? Yeah, music
is like inseparable from the holidays. It's a kid. It's a holds a lot of tradition. It's
the soundtrack to a lot of our trillings, pop culture and religious culture. So as a
musician myself, when I was in the States, I'd always be playing Christmas gigs. So churches
and schools would hire me to play trombone with their ensembles and that was really fun.
I kind of miss doing that. I'm trying to get connected here, but it's a little harder being
new here in Thailand. Yeah. So yeah, it's a lot of fun and then being able to teach
students and giving students that same experience and preparing for that experience is a big
part of what I do and really enjoy it. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, it's Pramie
here and I know we've been talking about, you know, what's special about the holiday
season, but I can say that what to me is special is to be able to be on the Students Incorporated
podcast and to be working again for another season. So as an old season two member, but
also as a season three member still, that's what I think is really special. As for the
holiday season, I think what's really special is this time of rest. And I think like, you
know, obviously this can look different for all of us in different ways, but to me, I
feel like rest can be, you know, catching up with family, friends, giving yourself the
time to maybe explore what you want to do or what you want to learn without other external
pressures simply because you want to read a book, watch a movie, do anything that you
want. And I think just this freedom from responsibilities and this freedom to be able to relax and kind
of rejuvenate is so special. And I think, you know, regardless of whether you celebrate
Christmas or not, there's still this time for you to reflect and relax. And I think
that's what's really special. And now we have Chanyeon and Yeonha who are our old season
two members who are now thriving in their US colleges when we miss them dearly.
Hi, I think that the holiday special because it's like a time where everyone can put aside
their differences and basically celebrate like happiness, joy, like that everything
that comes with like the holiday season. And like even if it's temporary, I think it's
still a good like change of mind, like a like temporary peace period where like people can
basically reflect on what their actions like or like so that they could possibly improve
on it in the future. And personally, I've never been like, I've never really had that
kind of mood because I mean, I don't really celebrate Christmas. Like I guess maybe seeing
how it's different in the US could be interesting because it's not that like widespread in
Thailand. Thank you.
I think what's so special about holiday seasons is definitely the people, the activities and
the food that occurs. I would say oftentimes for holiday seasons, it's like a reunion of
distant relatives and friends. And I think it's just like a great time where everyone
meets together and updates each other on each other's lives, but also at the same time celebrate
together a holiday. And I feel like oftentimes during holiday seasons, there's always really
fun activities, team bonding things, and also just like food, like different food that people
bring around. I feel like it's always really interesting to try dishes that different people
make. And I think ultimately just being able to reunite with people and celebrate the holiday
as a whole family, as a whole group of people together. Yeah.
And finally, we have Mr. Steven Lattice in the studio to conclude this segment with a
special holiday message. But first, Mr. Steven, may I ask you this question? What do you find
special about this holiday season?
I think what I find special is just a season where people are just naturally more joyful,
more thankful for who they are, more thankful for what they have, and more thankful to give
towards people in need during this time. It's a season of celebration.
Sure. And giving back. Yeah, for sure. Thank you. And we'd love for you to end this final
segment with a little Christmas cheer as well.
Okay. Well, I'd like to take this time to first off thank you all for being such a huge
part of the ICS community. This podcast is amazing. Thank you, podcast team. Pretty awesome.
But this whole ICS family is just a blessing to be a part of. The parents, the students,
the staff. It gives me time to reflect on just how blessed I am to be a part of this
beautiful, beautiful community that God has brought here to ICS. It's an honor and a privilege
to serve here because of all of you. Christmas is also a time to reflect on how we give to
others and show generosity towards those around us. And I hope everyone is encouraged today
to give back to your loved ones who care so deeply about you, like your parents out there,
students, but also give back to those in need around you. Find those people that could use
a small encouragement or a big encouragement and share in whatever means possible. In the
end, generosity often involves sacrifice. So feel free to give sacrificially in whatever
way you see fit during this awesome, beautiful Christmas season. I as a Christian during
this season reflect on the way God has given so sacrificially many years ago by sending
his one and only son to earth as a sacrifice to live among us, to live among the hardships
of what life has to offer, to live among a people who fail him time and time again, but
to eventually die for our sins and for a perfect sacrifice. So it was all out of love and care
for all of us here today. So I'm really thankful for that. And I hope you can have time to
reflect a bit more on the beauty of this Christmas season.
As we end this episode, the Students Incorporated team would like to send you off with a special
Christmas Carol. Ready? Here we go.
Christmas tree, let the Christmas spirit ring. Later we'll have some pumpkin pie and we'll
do some caroling. You will get a sentimental feeling when you hear voices singing, let's
be holly. Deck the halls with boughs of holly. Walking around the Christmas tree and the
Christmas tree. Happy holiday. Everyone dance and merrily in the new old fashioned way.
All right, stay tuned and we'll be back in 2025. Merry Christmas and happy new year.
And as always, this podcast would not be possible without the hard work and support of our International
Student Production team. All music and sound effects are courtesy of Pixabay.com, a vibrant
community of creatives sharing copyright free images, videos and music. And we are signing
off until next time. We are Students Incorporated, because your voice matters.
We are Students Incorporated, because your voice matters.
Thank you.