Welcome to Rainy Season

So, it's definitely here. Rainy season in Thailand is at least not like "rainy season" in Seattle--I won't be getting months of gray, drizzly days. Rains here are more like what I experienced when I lived in Atlanta, Georgia: short bursts of heavy downpour. I've also found that, in general, I can count on rain in the evenings rather than the mornings. But there are at least a few sunny portions of every day.

The picture above is of some of the fields near my house. I took it ages ago, not long after I got to Thailand. But it's not far off from what the fields look like now. We seem to be on the second rice crop of the year (the first having been harvested not long after the March-April break started). The farmers drain the field to plant, and then let it fill up with water again, so the effect, once the rice starts growing, is something like a very soggy-looking field of grass. The fields were planted again a few weeks ago, so the rice plants are just peeking above the surface of the water now. This is what they'll look like later on:

And then they'll turn a bit golden, almost like wheat, right before the fields are harvested. I still see pumps draining the field sometimes--I guess under the theory that even rice shouldn't drown under the rains of the season.

A teaching update: well, it's been a bit exhausting the past week or two. I'm doing a better job at explaining to the students that they need to get their homework on time, but some understanding seems to slip through the cracks. I had an entire class that only did half the assignment last week. I gave them another week to finish, and when I asked for it today, they gave me blank looks. I was very specific about what they needed to do. But, it's the last hour of the day, and the students in this particular class tend to be quite squirmy and ready to go home. So they might not have heard/listened to what I was telling them last week. I can't quite figure out if the missing homework is from the students being lazy, or from a lack of understanding. I've given them another week. We'll see if they do it this time. I also called out an entire class that, with the exception of five students out of the forty-five, had all copied each other's homework, a very distinctive and completely wrong set of directions. (We'd been working on the phrases "go past the ____" and "turn after the _____" and somehow the phrases "went above" and "undertaking" got in there--seriously, how does that happen?) The downside to having classes that are divided by ability level (as in, the top class in any given grade level is often called the "smart class") is that you know some days are just going to be challenging. On the other hand, you also know which days are going to be delightful.