In which I pray for rain...

After several days of 40-degree temperatures, the skies have abruptly darkened for the first time in months. The wind has picked up and vanquished the worst of the heat, and the entire compound is buzzing with the news of rain.

In other news, my students unexpectedly got the Friday afternoon off, and are now spending it watching my DVD of Children of Men - the best movie of 2006, to my mind. It's written with brilliant economy, in equal parts terrifying and hopeful, sincerely acted by all, and marked by probably the most astonishing cinematography I've ever seen. If you haven't seen it, go buy it right now, or you're not allowed to read my blog anymore.

But I wonder if it'll traumatize my students - a strange worry. After all, most of my students have seen armed conflict, and more than a few have lost family members to the brutality of the Burmese regime. It seems a little odd to worry that a violent movie, of all things, will unnerve them, but they're not used to cruel realism in their entertainment. Besides, there's that eternal teachers' handicap: the endless, insidious tendency to refer to one's students as "kids" and think of them accordingly. My students are mostly my age, and a few are older, and yet still I feel (wrongly) that it's my job to filter out inappropriate materials... hrm.