Because of conferences, teaching at Bangkhonthiinai this past week was postponed until Friday instead of the usual Wednesday.  Ken and Kobfa joined me and it was raining the entire drive down and continued to drizzle, nonstop, the entire day.

When it rains in the jungle, Ajarn Yai explained, many students stay home.  Don’t you just wish you could do that for work, too?  Out of our fifteen first to third graders, only six showed up.  A teacher to student ratio of 1:2 isn’t too bad, is it?

With three teachers all attending regularly, we’re really making some progress with the students, especially the fifth and sixth graders.  There are a few hopeless cases and we’re not spending a whole lot of time with them.  But there are some of the children, especially some of the boys (who usually are slower than the girls) who are really making progress. 

One of the things I really like about the schools here is that they reinforce the idea of community: everyone pitches in.  The gusting rain was making the covered walkways wet, so two of the third grade girls grabbed mops and were drying the boards, right.

The attendance of our afternoon class, the fourth through fifth graders, was much better: about 22 of 25.  We spent a lot of time practicing questions and answers.  There is some challenge in students distinguishing between “How are you?” and “What are you?”  Through in the other pronouns of “I”, “he” and “she” and confusion reigns.

We concluded the day with a game of bingo, using single-syllable words with the vowel “a” that some of the students can actually read.  Below: Khruu Somchai observes his fourth and fifth grade boys.