Wishful Thinking

Admittedly I was probably expecting too much to think that second semester classes would start when we had scheduled. Showing up Monday morning I was spoiled by the presence of 9 students in my morning class (of 27) and was delighted to have a good conversation with them about the upcoming semester. Then in the afternoon class only one student wandered over to the dark and locked building to tell me that he and his friends (hopefully meaning his faculty) weren't studying again until 10 March. Oh,Ok. Both times I basically begged the students to come to class on Wednesday, especially after they informed me that Monday is a holiday for International Womens' Day. So now I'll be starting class a week and a half later than planned. I think it will be shortly interrupted later though by the rumored arrival of Hun Sen to dedicate the new auditorium. It doesn't look near completion to me, but whenever that is, I anticipate it will wipe out a week's worth of class. By that time it will be April and we all know that whole month is a write-off. We'll see how much teaching and/or learning actually gets done. I am looking forward to focusing more on areas the students tell me they want to learn, but for that they actually need to show up.