When we returned to Yangon in January we were very happy to feel that the cool season was still hanging around. This was the first year that I actually felt its arrival-when we first came to Myanmar our friend Dave had told me “one day you will feel a cool breeze and know that the cool season has arrived!” Well, for four years I waited for this magical moment and it never happened.

We had a great time in Cambodia and now it was time to jet off to Vietnam! Gav did forget to document one memorable part of our stay in Siem Reap though. We noticed in Phnom Penh that Cambodia had many different national breweries and we made it our mission to try as many of them as we could get our hands on. There are lots of choices-Angkor, the confusingly similarly named Anchor, Cambodia, Hanuman, you get the drift. They also have the amusingly named Krud Beer. Their tagline? “Good Times, Krud Times.” Maybe that’s what Dickens had written before his copy editor got to the manuscript, who knows. Anyway, obviously that was a must try.

A few weeks ago we had a 2 day break from school. This was actually the Thursday and Friday of the week before Thanksgiving as we no longer get a holiday on actual Thanksgiving. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to have that day off with this specific population of students and there are actually a lot of Myanmar holidays in November so a few years ago it was decided that we would shift the vacation days to coincide with something that most people actually celebrated!

Well, we had a great trip to Komodo but it’s been a bit of a downward spiral health-wise since we returned! Three weeks ago Gav started complaining that it felt like he had a bit of something stuck in his eye. I told him he was fine and also that THIS time I was not taking him to a hospital to have it taken care of. A few summers ago while we were visiting London Gav decided to clean out our gutters or something and blew some leaf detritus into his eyeball in the process. I ended up having to take him to the London Eye Hospital and wait ages in the urgent care area until someone could q-tip the stuff out. When he was still complaining the next day I figured he had pink eye so I gave him some drops for that.

One of Gav’s duties as the acting director this year was to get all of the new staff into Yangon and get them settled into their lives here. In the past, new faculty have all flown to Bangkok where we had about 4 days to meet everyone, have a few meetings and get our visas to enter Myanmar. The school has since decided to do away with that first step and just have everyone get their visas in their home countries and then arrive here and have a bit more time to settle in before the craziness of school starts. I think this is a great change but it was all up to Gav (and me!) to organize the intro week.

Gav actually didn’t do too bad of a job summing up our summer. I will add a few more details just for the record. It’s hard to believe that it’s September already. On the dog walk this morning I realized that 1 year ago we were gearing up for our move to Thailand-so much has happened in a year! The school year is well and truly underway now and it is pretty much back to normal operations. Sports and things are happening again so it is nice to see kids being able to enjoy more of the fun aspects of school.

It’s hard to believe, but we are into our last four weeks of school for this year. This means that (hopefully) I am also in my last four weeks as a 6th grade teacher. It had actually been pretty fun as they are an amazingly easy group of kids to work with, but I am ready to go back to only having one job.

There are some real advantages to living in a developing country. Cocktails are cheap, tourists are few (or non-existent) and life is a a little less complicated for the most part. But every once in a while something crops up that just seems so absurd that you are reminded that every place on earth has its drawbacks.

Time seems to be really flying at the moment. I can’t believe the March will be here this week-I always used to think that March started the slippery slope into summer vacation and I guess that is still true. It’s a bit different here though, as March in London meant the very beginnings of some good weather and sunny days and here it is the start of the super hot season. 45 degree days are around the corner, although we have been enjoying such lovely and mild weather since we returned I can’t even complain. Our bougainvillea (above) seems to also be enjoying the temps.

One morning while we were in our quarantine hotel I got an ominous email from the head of school and the secondary principal saying that they “wanted to talk about the schedule” with me and would 1pm be a convenient time? I had an inkling that I knew what this conversation would entail, but I did try hard not to get “pre-pissy” (Gav’s word for when I get mad about something that has not happened yet).