Rainy Season

The color of Thailand has changed completely within the past few weeks going from a dry brown to every shade of green. It is hot/wet season in Thailand now and it has brought on a whole new set of beauties and challenges. Temperatures have been in the 100s and teaching in the heat is gruesome. My students seem to be like wilted flowers in the afternoon (and so am I!) as I stand in front my classroom trying to encourage them to hear the differences in vowel sounds our latest english unit. Showers have averaged 3 a day; 1 in the morning, 1 after school, 1 before bed. Mine and Amanda's bedrooms have been still sweltering hot after we come home from school, being on the second floor (even with our two fans), so we stay downstairs till after dinner.

With this heat has come intense thunder and lightening about every other day. The thunder crackles so loud it hurts your ears and shakes the house. Thais are extremely weary of the lightening for some reason making everybody turn off their cell phones, all appliances unplugged and even refusing to drive in their cars. I was stuck at my school for an hour this week as all the teachers waited for the storm to pass over. One of my classrooms isn't fully enclosed making it possible for rain to come in. This has left puddles of water that I now teach around, of course the students aren't phased at all by this. The beauty of the heat and rain has been the vegetation turning wonderful shades of green and rapidly growing. The newly planted rice fields have sprung up almost overnight in their flooded fields.

What has also been rapidly reproducing is the mosquitos, flies, and insects. My legs are once again covered in bites despite my twice daily applications of repellent and lighted mosquito coils. My bedroom floor is covered nightly by little black bugs that drop down from off the ceiling. I take refuge under my mosquito net and use a headlamp to do any reading. My gopgays (huge 12 inch lizards) have been in a hunting frenzy on my bedroom windows snatching up all the moths which make my window screens shake as they bounce up against it.

With all the rain more dangerous creatures have come out, mainly snakes and scorpions. Last week I woke up and went down stairs to use the bathroom and I open the door to see a little tail that was way too long to be a lizard. Pi Yok, my thai roommate, had warned us about snakes in the bathroom, so I walked no further. Amanda had woken up the same time and saw me standing outside the bathroom with a broom in hand. I told her about the very long snake like tail I saw. Being from Florida, Amanda has seen her share of snakes and isn't scared of them so she took the broom and went in to investigate. She calmly swept the snake back down our bathroom drain hole like no big deal. The next day I again saw a seemly harmless snake slither by my classroom. Where ever I walk in my house I always make sure to never step in the dark because you don't know what will be there. A more harmless but pesky intruder has been the swarms of ants that have invaded the house. They climb into the water heater making my morning cup of instant coffee have floating ants in it and have even managed to get into a peanut butter jar. We have been fighting back with ant chaulk which seems to do the trick. However even if you brush up aganist a wall you will probably have a few ants crawling on you!

In other news, here are my new ADORABLE kindergarden student hard at work in english class. They are by far my most motivated and intense students repeating every word that comes out of my mouth.