Still raining!

It's still raining! Last night the rain started again with intensity... MCC friends who live an hour away were coming in to the city and the normally 1.5 hour bus ride stretched to 2.5 hours - the bus had to go around the flooded river and cross at a different point. One major river south of San Pedro, Rio Ulua, has flooded. Schools have been canceled, and everyone is waiting to see if the river closest to San Pedro, Rio Chamelecon, will also flood it's banks. If it does flood many colonias on the outskirts of the city will be inundated with water. However frustrating it may be, it seems like the only thing to do is watch and wait to see what happens... people seem prepared for this as everyone has dealt with flooding before. You can follow this link to read about the damage to other parts of the country.

The newspapers are calling this rain "El fantasma de Mitch", or "the ghost of Mitch", the major hurricane that destroyed much of Honduras' infrastructure in 1998. Hondurans seem to go by a pre-Mitch and post-Mitch calendar, referring to major events or contruction according to whether something happened before or after the devastating hurricane. We feel very fortunate to live on the second floor of a strong cinderblock structure. How strange it feels to stand on the balcony overlooking the street filled with rushing water, imagining the people living along the banks of the rivers who are no doubt fearing for their homes and maybe where they will end up sleeping tonight.

On a personal note, the flooding delayed my first day of teaching English at the Kid's Land Preschool and School, run by La Liga de Lactacion Materna (yes, that is exactly what it sounds like). After several months of hoping to find an organization to volunteer with during weeks when we are not hosting groups or traveling, I found out about this bilingual school looking for a volunteer to help with English classes. It is quite flexible and will work with my schedule and so I'm pretty excited to get started. They are wrapping up their school year soon so, so I'll mainly be reviewing what grades 2 - 7 (I'll meet with each class for about 45 minutes) should have learned this year.