Sitting at school

Well, am sitting here in my last free period before our Thingyan (Water Festival) break. Let's talk about what's already happened today. My students casually mention that there was a BOMB at our opponent school yesterday. They make all sorts of crude jokes about how it was one our of students who was mad with his girlfriend who goes to that school. They moan about the fact that they have to be at school when the other school cancelled theirs for the day (surprise, surprise!).

So later on, as I'm telling another teacher about it, someone walks in to look out my classroom window--at the enormous cloud that is broiling just beyond the building next door. So there's a fire with smoke jumping 100 feet in the air and we are casually discussing it over cups of tea. "Hey, class, I want to give you a perfect example of poor government, when everything results in poor management..." Or perhaps, "...and when we want to know how people are evited from their homes we can just look out the window here...". This must be I think the fourth fire this year. The first was was the best though. We got evacuated for that one. And where to, you ask? To our open-air gym just down the street where we can spend a couple of hours inhaling noxious smoke and sweating our shirts off.

Downstairs I discover that our students went to a school meet at this other school yesterday afternoon. They had to come back too, because no one told us about it! The government sent 40 officicals to scan our school yesterday afternoon, but I only hear about it through gossip of students.

I wonder if my plane will take off today? I wonder if bombs have exploded across town without my knowledge. Perhaps there's another coup somewhere? Or perhaps its nothing.