a soggy end to the rainy season

Each Sunday morning I walk the 25 neighborhood blocks from my house to the home of one of my fourth grade students. I tutor her, her father and her little sister in English conversation for a couple of hours each week.. it's great getting to spend some time with a Thai family at home, playing with the little girls, talking with the parents (as well as is possible with their limited English and my severely limited Thai) and taking advantage of the tasty treats they share with me. (this week it was thick slices of dense, chewy Chinese moon cake filled with a sweet bean paste.)

The girls' parents told me this week that apparently it's supposed to be the end of the rainy season now in Bang Phli, an occasion marked by the Rap Bua festival today. The monks at the temples, they told me, are required to stay within the temple walls during the entire rainy season... this festival, then, celebrates the day when they're allowed to roam free again. Apparently they're not allowed to walk around during rainy season because there are so many sprouting plants and little animals and insects crawling around on the ground that it's impossible for them to walk on the ground without accidentally killing things. at least that's what I gathered from our broken English/Thai conversation. The main event in the celebration is loads of boats floating down the river, into which all the people lining the banks of the river throw armloads of lotus flowers so that each boat ends up stuffed full of flowers and each boat's lone passenger (a big buddha statue) is essentially buried.

Well, I'm unconvinced that this is the end of the rainy season. It has been raining harder and more often than ever here lately. The neighborhood streets are more like canals these days and I never leave the house without an umbrella and a change of dry clothes. On more than one occasion walking home from school these past couple of weeks I've taken off my shoes and waded (almost knee-deep at some points) down the street, watching all sorts of interesting objects (a sofa cushion, piles of trash, a couple of school notebooks, chopsticks...) lazily float past my legs. At night the rain pounding on the roof, the cars, the banana leaves on the tree outside my window, is often so deafening I can't listen to my beloved npr podcasts or watch the arrested development dvds amelia brought me.. I can't even talk on the phone it's so ridiculously loud. To be honest, though, I find the stormy weather exciting most of the time. as long as I'm not caught outside in it, wearing my thin white work shirt, carrying my computer and cell phone, 30 blocks from home, without a motorbike in sight. (this has happened)