The rains came down...

Here's the latest from the BBC.  What will really happen?  Who knows.  It feels a bit like Snow-mageddeon in Michigan last year, but at the same time, the floods north of us are altogether too real, and well, it's been raining most of the past 24 hours.  Woke up at 1am to a huge storm. The street immediately in front of the school is flooded, but it doesn't take more than a soccer team spitting to flood it, so it's not a good indicator.  The school is definitely taking lots of precautions- placing sandbags at all the gates, telling students to take all their textbooks home in case we need to send them their assignments via email next week.  But generally speaking, life continues on as normal.  Went to the mall after school to hunt down some wellies (even if the water only gets ankle deep, it's full of nastiness [read: sewage] and debris and potentially snakes) but was unsuccessful in finding any.  So, had some dinner and foot massage, bought a rug for the apartment, had a cup of tea.  The government says the defenses will hold, but of course they have to say that.  While I don't think that Flood-ageddeon is going to arrive on my doorstep, I'm not sure I entirely trust what the government is saying either.  At any rate, it keeps life interesting. 

Flood Update- Again

I live in Bang Na, in the south-central part of this map.  We are in a Level 1 area, so do not expect too much flooding here (half meter or less).  Right now it just feels like a lot of waiting to see what will happen.  What ever does happen will probably happen in the next few days.  Continue to pray for the many people who are affected.  Thanks!!

Flood Update

Here's a short BBC video giving an update today along with a BBC article.  Again, I am not in any immediate danger, but I did stop by the grocery store last night, where there were a lot of empty shelves and long lines at the registers.  At the moment Bangkok is facing a triple threat over the next few days: high tide, water moving down from the north, and rain predicted.  As of right now, things are pretty dry, school is in session, and it was even pretty sunny most of today. Continue to pray! 

Flood Warnings

My friend found this video, it's even better.  And not so long and weird...

Thailand is in the final weeks of the rainy season, and I had been told repeatedly that October was the rainiest month of all- so far it has no disappointed (it's thundering and raining even as I write this).  On a personal level, I don't mind the rain, but it has become quite problematic because of widespread flooding across Thailand.  I've been looking for a good article about the flooding, but they're, emmm, all in Thai (Okay, found one video/site.  The video is a bit weird in parts, but if you stick with it and can tolerate the music, it does give you some good info and a picture of what is going on. And keep in mind the video is already 10 days old, and it's gotten significantly worse in the past 3 days). The basic problem is this- many provinces are experiencing the worst flooding in 50+ years.  As in, water up to the 2nd floor of people's homes.  The ancient city of Ayutthaya is underwater.  And now, as the heaviest rain comes, it is threatening more homes, more people, and Bangkok.  The Soi (small street) right outside the school floods at the drop of a hat, but the flooding doesn't really pose any danger to me personally.  I live on the 4th floor.  If the flooding is bad, school will close (like a snow day, but without the cold weather...).  If the power goes out, or the internet, I am more inconvenienced than anything else.  But for many, many people here, this is a huge concern.  This flood, like so many natural disasters, doesn't really affect all socio-economic levels equally.  Let's be honest- the residents of the cities luxury high rises aren't at much risk.  Those who lose the most are often those with the least to lose.  Those along the cities many canals.  On the outskirts, without a second story to move their belongings to.  There are plenty of people at risk from all walks of life- a nearby neighborhood where many teachers live has had flooding before.  We don't really know how bad it's going to get.  But the predictions don't look good.  So, I ask you to pray for Thailand (the flooding outside the city and the losses there are immense), pray for protection for Bangkok, and pray for those whose homes are already underwater.  Secondary students at ICS are packing shoe boxes for children for Christmas time, and we've increased our goal this year because of the increased need from the floods.  One verse keeps coming into my head when I read the reports of impending doom: Elijah was a man just like us.  He prayed earnestly that it would not rain and it did not rain on the land for 3 1/2  years.  I post updates in the days to come- hopefully just saying that everything is fine.  Be assured that I am not in any direct danger. My worst case scenario involves minor inconveniences.  I do not want you to worry about me.  But I do want you to pray for this land and people.

Ballet, Birthday, Baseball, and Beethoven in Bangkok

Ballet: Last Friday night I went to my first ballet class ever.  So fun!  I had missed my jazz class earlier in the week since I was still tired and recovering, so went to ballet with friends on Friday instead.  I couldn't keep up, of course, but enjoyed it nonetheless.  Also enjoyed having dinner downtown afterwards at a Mexican restaurant- fajitas!

Clare, Mutarica, and Holly

Birthday:  Last weekend was my friend's birthday so on Wednesday another friend and I took her out for pancakes and foot massages.  Yummmm and ahhhhhh. After a long not-so-great day, it was so much fun to laugh and celebrate with these new dear friends.  The chocolate lava pancakes weren't bad either.  I definitely praise God for bringing these women into my life!

Enjoying my chocolate lava pancakes

Baseball: As noted in yesterday's post, it has been a week filled with baseball.  Watching, checking, cheering.  and now, the fun continues.  It is rather inconvenient that all the games occur either in the early morning hours or while I am working, but I am thankful for the technology that allows me to at least watch some of the action.  My students are already planning our World Series Victory party.  Mostly they're just counting on a day without homework, but hey, whatever it takes to turn them into Tigers fans...

Beethoven: Last night I was able to go to the symphony with a dear friend from work.  It was so much fun to head downtown on a Friday night and the venue, the Thailand Cultural Center, was beautiful.  We were treated to two symphonies by a visiting Russian orchestra.  The first piece I don't remember the name, but the second one was Beethoven's 9th.  Which of course means nothing to me, but maybe means something to some of you.  My favorite part was the end, which is the song "Joyful Joyful".  It was fun to recognize some of the music.  It started with just the cellos and basses, later adding the full orchestra AND the huge chorus and four opera soloists (the same group is performing the opera Marriage of Figaro tonight).  So the performance ended with this massively talented group of Russians playing/singing in German in front of a Thai/international audience, all the while praising God, "Joyful, joyful, we adore thee God of glory Lord of love...".  Absolutely stunning.  A very fun night out with another great friend.

Kristine and I on the grounds at the Thai Cultural Center

I have a lot more to blog about, but since it doesn't start with B, I'll just have to make another post...

Tigers Fever!

It's official: my student have caught Tigers Fever!  I have been talking up the Tigers for a week now, and hung a few fan towels up in my classroom.  At first, they were just curious, wondering what all the fuss was about.  They offered me deals: become a Manchester United fan and they would root for the Tigers.  But as the week has gone on and we have tracked the American League series scores together and followed each Tigers v. Yankees game, their excitement has been building.  Today, we knew, was the day.  I was teaching during the entire game, and you would think I'd need to be "sneaking off" every few minutes to check the score- not necessary.  They wanted to know as much as I did.  So every 15 minutes, all morning, we'd stop and look- and cheer and bite our nails.  When my homeroom left for their 3rd period class we were up by 1 heading into the 8th inning.  My 8th graders came in and took a quiz.  I'd walk a lap, monitoring the room, they stop by the computer to see what had developed.  The internet at school isn't fast enough for us to listen or watch, so I had the Gameday feature turned on.  The kids finished their quiz with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th, so we put Gameday up on the front projector to watch Valverde's last out together.  And the room erupted into yells and applause.  A few seconds later the phone rang- it was my homeroom, down the hall in LA, calling to congratulate me on "our" team's success.  So now we're all psyched and ready for Texas, me and this crew of 100 international middle schoolers who has discovered the joy of cheering passionately for your team, especially when they defeat the Big Gad Yankees.  Go Tigers! 

Dear Miss Clare,

This is the first time in my teaching career that at least one section of language arts/English has not been on my schedule.  Mostly, I am really glad.  While I enjoy teaching certain aspects of language arts, there are other things about those classes that I don't like.  One thing that I miss terribly is having student response journals where we can write back and forth.  Students (like many of us) will say and reveal things on paper that they won't tell you otherwise.  It gives me such a great glimpse into their heads and allows me to get to know them in a new way.  This year I have decided that it doesn't really matter if I teach math- once per quarter they are going to take 10 minutes or so to write to me, and I will write back.  It's not quite the same, but at least it's something.  This past week I had some of my 6th graders write to me.  Many welcome the chance to write something where spelling and grammar don't count.  Some still see it as a chore.  And some really make me laugh.

I use a reward system in my class with raffle tickets.  Students are awarded raffle tickets through the month for doing various good things- helping a classmate, asking a good question, working as a team, doing a great job in a fire drill, doing something kind, or anything else positive that strikes me as worthy of a ticket.  The idea is to catch them being good and reinforce behaviors I want to see more of.  They don't get a ticket every time they do something good- I could never catch them all- nor do they get one if they ask or point out their good deed.  When you win a ticket you write your name on it and drop it into a jar for your class. At the end of the month, I draw out x number of tickets from the jar and those students win prizes- candy, gum, pencils, late HW passes, etc.  Apparently I have been a little slack in handing out raffle tickets lately, or so thought this student in his letter to me this week:

I love the illustrations especially.You can click on the picture to enlarge it if needed.