end of summer

We’re having a cold snap here, and I love it. Jacket and jeans weather. I’d be happy if it really were fall, so long as winter doesn’t come a month early. A couple days ago, the morning was fresh and cool, and all day long, big Dutch-landscape-painting clouds blew in. Then the clouds got crowded and black. I went walking out on the steppe anyway and dead-headed a couple sunflowers, hoping to plant their seeds in our yard. I have an off-season sunburn. It never did rain, but the wind has been picking up steadily. The clouds blew over and it looks like the chill is here to stay. That must be one of the things about extremes of temperature and daylight hours: the peaks and the lows don’t hold for long, they have to change fast to get to where they’re going. So no more 10:30 sunsets, no more hot mornings.

We lost another two volunteers from my group this past week. This isn’t an easy time for teaching volunteers: we are dealing with the administration and have no students. The problems we set aside for the summer are popping up again. Both of my co-English teachers have left, with no one to replace them, I have no books, no rosters, no schedule, and no language tutor. There is one week left before the first day, and our time continues to be taken up urgently arranging books that aren’t ours on shelves that will be dismantled soon. We come to school early so that random troupes of principals and teachers can come through at random times and look at our plants. We are expected to look appealingly unoccupied in our neat little rooms. I have a sense that something's gonna hit the fan when the kids come in, but to be honest, I'm not sure how far from normal this is.