Those of you in the Northern Hemisphere will kindly overlook the relativism I’m employing when I say that winter (ruduu now – “cold season” in Thai) has arrived in the Kingdom.  Our generally southerly winds have shifted and cooler winds from the north are blowing in. 

While the daytime high hit 31 C / 89 F and last night’s low was 24 C / 76 F – “summery” by many people’s standards – the breezes help keep the heat index more bearable, especially if you can stay out of the direct sunlight.

Interestingly for those of you planning on visiting over the next month (that would be about a dozen people that I know of so far) today’s high and low temperatures are a mirror of the historical averages for November.

The arrival of winter coincides with the end of the mid-term school holiday, so after a month of no teaching I drove down to Bang khon thii nai Wednesday morning to resume my English teaching.  Tod was unable to join me, but it looks like Ken – a new arrival from Chicago – is interested in coming along next week so maybe I can get a whole carload of teachers soon. 

During the break, which was a working holiday for the teachers, the ajarn yai (principal) had done some sprucing up of the classroom in which I teach, trying to make it a more dedicated “foreign language learning space.”  Included in this were several new graphics and signs touting familiar English expressions:

Upper left: “In Rome, do as Romans do” (Thai version: “When you enter a city where the people have one eye half-closed, you must half-close one eye, too.”  The word, “leuw” doesn’t necessarily mean to wink, it can also mean an eye being half-closed because of a physical reason.) 

Upper right: “Cloudy mornings tern [sic] to clear evenings.”  (Thai version: “Mornings with clouds and fog always turn to be afternoons that are bright and shining.”)

 Left: “Love at first sight.” (Thai version: “Love (when) first meeting.”)

The drive down was a nice one.  As I was driving along Thanon Rama IV toward the sunrise, I caught a great view of the sun, big and orange against the horizon, silhouetting a building.  It was a fantastic visual and I was going to go back this morning and shoot it with my camera but discovered at 5:30 this morning that the piece of my tripod that attached my camera to the tripod is still attached to my 35mm camera – which is back in Kansas City! 

However, as I was crossing the Chao Phraya River on Rama IV bridge, I did get a nice picture of the sun filtered through the ever-present, partially-polution, partially-humidity haze.  Unfortunately, you’re not allowed to stop on this bridge for taking pictures or anything else.

At the school in Bang khon thii nai, the students were busily helping out with chores.  As I’ve mentioned before, an important part of what the school teaches is the sense of community and the students all contribute to the upkeep of the school.

The grass had grown long during the holiday and had been cut just a day before school resumed, so the boys were collecting the cut grasses along with fallen palm fronds and were burning them in a very wet and smokey bonfire. 

The girls were decidedly disinterested and instead tended to the flowers and other chores.

The boys thought that the fire was great fun, standing in the midst of lung-darkening plumes of smoke, being covered in ash.  Ajarn Yai was not overly impressed and finally told them to stop adding to the burning pile.

As I watched and took photos of the boys gathering around the fire, eagerly feeding it and watching it grow, their excitement growing in direct proportion to the smoke, the thought occurred to me that this was on the verge of becoming a Thai primary school version of Lord of the Flies.

After the chores, the students played the National Anthem (not done correctly so Ajarn Yai scolded them and had them do it a second time) and then we began our day.  As I feared, there was insignificant retention of English vocabulary.  Actually, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be.  But we spent the day reviewing vocabulary and practicing basic sentences.  One nice thing is that the confidence level is much higher when the students speak.  They now go around the room and can introduce themselves and share their favourite things (no, we don’t sing “Raindrops on Roses”) with only a little bit of hesitation.