Rain Day, but.....

Wisconsin has its snow day and Honduras has its... rain days. Due to the effects of Tropical Depression 16, which, yes, a week later, is still hanging around, the country has declared a "estado de emergencia" and school was canceled.

Some of Anah's students sent her e-cards (psst... because its her birthday) today and wondering if we had school canceled not because of the rain, but because the government made their teacher's b-day a national holiday! Cute!

Obviously the rain is pretty intense, but just to calm those who might be thinking of sending us ark supplies... everything is fine with us. One of the difficulties in living in a developing nation is that these sort of natural "troubles" hit the poor disproportionately. So while our habitations, our school, and students have little or no troubles its the rest of the country that has to deal with the real impacts of these rains.

Yeah... my roof came in, but that's nothing to a whole school disappearing, yeah.... the street in front of our house has a mini-lake, but our house isn't in the middle of a river, and yeah.... our students have giant SUVs so rain is easily forded unlike the rest of the countryside which travels by foot, bike, or donkey-cart. Its easy to see why a state of emergency was called.

While we enjoy the day off... more time to plan for the rest of the week and Anah's birthday party this weekend... I'm also thinking about those here who are really suffering.

Tropical Depression Number 16

If you're a fan of the National Hurricane Center like I am you'll know that our lovely country is currently experiencing Tropical Depression 16. While it is not expected to become a tropical storm or hurricane, that doesn't mean we haven't been experience some "nice" weather here.

Tropical Depressions, by definition, are nothing serious (don't worry, moms). It usually means a lot of rain, but the wind speeds are harmless. Like I said its just rain... lots and lots of rain. Check it out:



Over the last couple of weeks the oppressive heat that has blanketed San Pedro Sula has transitioned to cooler temps (70s and 80s) and frequent showers. About a week or so ago it rained pretty hard and thundered about as loud as I have ever heard. Given we're living in the Sula Valley those in the area without adequate shelter has been at a big risk.

Suffice to say, I (Dan) was surprised to show up at school and be greeted by this outside my classroom:



Yup... the ceiling outside my classroom has become separated from the rest of the building. Not cool. Luckily, my classroom is fine and the damage is all outside it.

That was until today. As TD16 came into town the last 24 hours has been extremely wet. All day it has been raining and the state of the ceiling became perilous. After reporting the damage over a week ago, maintenance finally came over to the middle school to fix it.

Oh wait... I'm just kidding. They put a bunch of red tape (ironic huh?) around the area that I had already cornered off with tape last week (you can see my handiwork in the above picture). So I spent I significant amount of time after school today scolding kids who we're trying to wander into the closed off area (which now included one set of stairs). Their logical assumed that convenience was more important than safety.

My fear-mongering finally paid off when about 10 minutes later the ceiling collapsed blocking access to my classroom. Here are some pictures:







Needless to say it was relatively entertaining to hear the creaking of the ceiling, watch it slowly shift in a downwards trajectory, and then see it all come down in its drywall and aluminum-braced (I've got a guess why it fell!) glory.

So lucky Mr. Wiersema gets to be the roving teacher for the next couple of days while our top-notch maintenance men will clean up the mess and then leave the ceiling exposed for the next couple of months (just a guess).

Good times!