Today (It Finally Stopped Raining)

It was raining at 6 am this morning (after hard rain the night before). An hour later, I was on my way to school with Emmy, still raining. An hour later, I was in a meeting at the school, still raining. An hour later, the meeting was winding down and I realized the soccer field was underwater. Still raining. I walked through the downpour and pulled our van to the edge of the parking lot, saw that the water in the street in front of the school was extremely deep (it's always bad in heavy rains, but this was seriously deep water). Seeing a car come through up to its bumper and a truck with steam pouring out of it trying to get through, I realized I musn't do such a thing to our poor vehicle. So I pulled it back in to the parking lot and considered...I had a baby to feed at home, so only one thing to do...shoes off, pants rolled up, umbrella up, step off the sidewalk and into the nearly knee deep water, wade to a taxi. Two taxis (the first one ran over something hidden in the flood and had a flat tire, so I stood on the side of the highway and hailed a second one), and over an hour later, I was home and so glad to be there!

I went in and took the hottest shower I could muster with our warm water heater, put on a sweater I dug up on a high shelf (all that wading made me cold!), we made hot chocolate and spent the rest of the morning hoping it would stop raining. The street in front of our house was running like a river (see picture above), and we were some of the fortunate ones; the flooding was not severe in our neighborhood and lots of folks we know here had flooding in their homes today, not to mention all the people who live in pieced together homes...I just don't know what they do at times like this.

As we stood outside (after Tim fished our trash can in so it didn't float down the street like some others were doing) and prayed about the rain stopping, I felt a scurrying on my bare foot and jumped like a crazy woman to escape the humongous roach that had just clambered over. The rain finally stopped around noon. I've never been so happy to see rain end. We got word that the children at Emmy's school would be bused out to the highway and picked up at a business there because the roads leading to the school were impassable. So Tim undertook what ended up being a three hour round trip to collect her. They had a big adventure on the songtaew and bus, and arrived, finally, with Emmy in his arms as he walked through the water down the street. Here are some photos he took while he was out...

our street




our friend Ying braving the water to buy coffee!

School's cancelled for tomorrow, and we hear the rain is supposed to continue for a few more days. We would appreciate your prayers for safety, especially for all the people who suffer when it rains like this.