RAIN!

Sorry I haven´t written in a long time, I have been busy in the past couple of weeks. I´ll write about that in a blog later today, but right now all I can think about is RAIN.



I wrote about rain in a blog earlier in the year, but the rainy season really kicked it up a notch in the past week. Since this past monday, it has rained continuously pretty much every moment of the day and night. I vaguely recall a thursday afternoon break from the rain for about an hour, but thats it! Is this what a monsoon is? Anyways, in addition to this, I conveniently left my rain coat in the office in Managua, good work Paul. So basically I just have to wait for the times when the rain slows down to be just a drizzle to go anywhere I need to go.



This rain has been irritating for many reasons. First and foremost, when its raining all the time you can not hang your clothes out to dry. I desperately needed clean clothes (as did the rest of Corinto/Nicaragua) so I had to wash and dry my clothes inside, which leaves everyone smelling fairly mildewy, gross. The other thing is that everything is just wet. The air is wet, you can feel it. My bed and clothes feel moist. My matches wont light which means its difficult to light my gas stove (after 20 failed tries with 20 different matches, lucky number 21 finally lit). My patio flooded. My shoes and bottoms of pants are always wet. Its just gross. Thank goodness the rainy season is over in another month.



But this irritating rain might, and already has, turn into a bigger problem. There is a lot of flooding all across the country. Peace Corps office in Nicaragua has consolidated all the volunteers in their nearest big city or in Managua, the capital city. Which means I am currently in Chinandega with the other volunteers from Chinandega waiting out this rain in a hotel (not bad, it has a TV and three free meals a day). Supposedly there are a couple of tropical storms headed our way so they are afraid if they dont get us out of our sites now, the already saturated ground will completely flood when these bigger storm systems come and we´ll be trapped in our sites. As of yesterday there were a few volunteers that were stuck in their sites and Peace Corps went to get them in their cars with snorkel gear (air intake above the roof of the car so it can pass through deep waters). I think all the volunteers are safe in their consolidation points now. Us volunteers don´t think anything serious will happen but I guess its better to be safe than sorry. The staff of Peace Corps Nicaragua is really great about keeping us safe. They may be overcautious, but they are responsible for 150 some volunteers so it makes sense.

Anyways, thats my life right now, wet and on hold. I´ll write later this week about my new house and the project I´m working on. But, I want to take pictures of my new house (hopefully not flooded!) to post on here. I hope all is good and dry with everyone!