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.

Ooh, I like a good bit of alliteration in a blog post title. Of course, this is all a bit contrived. There isn’t really much to say on the cars and critters front. I thought we would be getting the same car back as we had when we left but it seems the global car shortage and affects on the second hand car market is just as apparent in Myanmar as it is everywhere else. Instead we’ve ended up with a Suzuki Swift which is essentially a cheap mini. I like a high seating position and a good space for Nell in the back so didn’t think I’d like it but it’s actually quite a bit newer and higher spec than the other car. When you put your foot on the accelerator something actually happens which is a nice novelty and Nell actually fits in quite nicely in the small area at the back. Also, Lindsey got her Myanmar driving licence!

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.

On a random and unnecessary trip to the DIY store just for the sake of going for a drive in our car (which I love) and to justify said trip we bought some mosquito zappers recently. They look like small tennis rackets but have batteries which pass a small electric current into the mesh of the racket.

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.

As I write this, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is in it’s 11th day. I was shocked when the coup happened in Myanmar but nothing compares to the shock of a modern day war in Europe. The inability of any country or group of countries to intervene though does put into perspective Myanmar’s own plight.

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).

We made it back to Yangon! On January 7th, Gav and I (and the rest of the people who had been living in Thailand) flew to Kuala Lumpur to meet the rest of the returning faculty for a charter flight back to Yangon. The logistics of this were a bit complicated as Malaysia has quite a complicated process (not unlike the Sandbox program that we entered Thailand on) to enter and stay, which obviously we were not doing. However, since the flight we had OUT of KL was a charter flight rather than a regularly scheduled commercial flight, it was not viewable to ground staff who would be checking us in at our point of origin.