Now, we just need chillies and sugar....

Last week we had an incredibly strong storm at the school. I made my way to the middle of the house (which happens to be the bathroom) and far away from windows. I highly doubt that this precaution was necessary, but I think that's the Minnesotan coming out in me. Springtime, tornadoes, high winds - so it was a more natural instinct than something I thought about. I haven't seen a storm like this here before, though - we got hail!

Can you see the little pieces of hail?

The storm passed quickly enough and when I went outside there were branches, leaves, and fruit everywhere! (I know this pales in comparison to the earthquakes happening around the world, but when your student just took a long time that morning to sweep all around the school, you feel a little bad!) I was also a little worried about our garden because of the hail.

When he walked out of the house it looked more chaotic than this picture made it seem. A huge branch from one of the trees fell on the neighbors house.

When people walked by the school they looked a little surprised at all the debris. And we had to sweep the road so cars wouldn't drive over the fruit making it slippery and dangerous for motorbikes.

When I saw two of my students, Uaorawet and Atiwat, we took stock, and in typical fashion, their brains hadn't automatically gone to what may or may not have happened at the farm - there were more important things to consider. Atiwat announced that, "Now, we need chillies and sugar." So we gathered up all of the fallen fruit, mangoes and star apples.





They washed them and cut them up and...
...we had a snack. Good idea! Is this kind of like making lemons into lemonade...?



(Posted by Erika)