The start of the rainy season

I mentioned before that it hasn´t rained here in a month. That all changed three days ago. We were having a <> night and suddenly the power went out. We looked outside and there was a big storm about 5 miles out. It looked like it would pass us by, but the wind changed a little, and suddenly everyone was gone.

they don´t like lightening here, and there was a lot of it coming at us fairly quickly. It apparently kills several people annually. Quitita said that in an electrical storm you shouldn´t hold anything metal or stand up. This is a fairly flat island. The storm did hit around 11:30. I was trying to sleep but could still see the flashes with my eyes closed and the windows shut, and feel the thunder through my mattress. The rain followed, strong enough to push through the roof, under the walls and it seemed as if it was even seeping in through the block walls. Just about everything got wet, but apparently this is normal. In the morning, I woke to find all the low areas flooded, most of the streets right now have about a foot of water in them. And it´s rained every night since, though not as hard. And we´ve yet to have any of the strong winds I´ve heard about.

It´s usually cloudy, the well is full, and the ants have calmed down some, all things I appreciate. BUT, it´s about time for the large pools of water to start generating thousands of mosquitos. Already the gnats are pretty viscious. It could be that I´m leaving just in time. Monday I think I´m going back to Carorita.

I´ve really enjoyed my time here. The people are very open and friendly. I feel like there is a lot of work to be done here. I´ve helped Toby with a few things, but I´ve just started to see what is here and to get used to the culture. I´d like to come back for a while at some point, but that´s a difficult thing to do. We´ll see. I am looking forward to the relative luxury of Carorita, and to being able to talk to the people I met when I arrived. At that point I could mostly just say hello. Now I´m far from fluent, but I can at least hold some semblance of a conversation. I think the rest of my trip is going to fly by. Just a couple weeks in Carorita then back to the US.