Rainy Ramblings

Well, the rainy season came early this year. 76 hours of basically continuous rain so far. I was about ready to build a boat in our 5m sq tiled backyard, but it's cleared up now. Temperature is much cooler & pleasant. It should hot up with afternoon storms for the next 6 months. August usually has 22 wet days and 225mm of rain. Really looking forward to that month. Sorry Goulburnites - would love to send some down to you. As yet I haven't been able to find real-time local radar imagery. HNCMA living has made me a meteorological nut. I'll confess to heading to the BOM website occasionally to keep track with how you are faring.

With all this rain I've been trying to find things to do and to get lots of my "to do" things done (though language classes will be next week!).

On (rainy) Friday night I met up with Alison Doughty whose mum attends Toonie Anglican. Alison teaches year 5/6 at Chiang Mai International School - originally established to teach missionary kids about 60 years ago. We went to the same high school, proving the world is small and getting smaller.

I spent (rainy) Sunday afternoon at a local Children's Home about 20km east of town. Cute kids, from 4-9 yrs old. I'd met the teacher, Averil at the ANZAC service. She's from NZ. There's a very good chance I'll help with their gardening and environmental syllabus while I'm over here.

There are some really good opportunities in Chiang Mai for me to seek out volunteer gigs and mission-related travel. I hope to use my time here to gain a lot of these experiences.

I've been reading a book about South East Asia's recent environmental history that leaves me very sad. It was written by an environmental reporter for one of the English newspapers in Bangkok. I'm part way through and up to the armpits in tales of mass species extinctions, government corruption, westerner arrogance and social inequality. I've read about Bangkok pollution, dam building, tourism encroachment in coastal areas and the now-illegal timber trade. Western cultures seem to have imparted technologies without the benefit of hindsight of the problems they can cause. The book is very useful in understanding what is happening up here, but leaves me feeling sad and unsettled.