Hey everybody,

Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers. The hurricane somehow didn't hit us directly. The eye moved south, taking with it the strongest winds. It still brought plenty of wind and rain. The hotel was sturdy, but the rain still came in the roof. The hotel just had two stories, and my room was on the second and my room got flooded. I moved into another room with friends for a little while, then we all decided it was safer to go sleep downstairs in the dining hall. The hotel staff (some of whom lived at the hotel) were very understanding and let us move some mattreses into that area and we had a hurricane slumber party! It was alright except that since it was under my room, eventually it started leaking a little, but not much. We had hot meals every day we were there and there was a generator so we had light. Didn't have water for a while, but they started the back-up tank so we got to shower saturday night.

Sunday morning I got to go home where they had started some repairs. My room and bathroom had just started leaking Saturday night, but not too much so it was easily mopped up. I unpacked everything else, but we still had no power or water. Besides boring, it really shows you how much running water plays such a huge part of life. Electricity I can manage without for a while, but everytime you go to use the bathroom, wash your hands, wash the dishes, want a drink of water, cook some food, take a shower, or wash your clothes you need water! I finally got to wash my clothes today. There's a seperate pipe out behind the house that had some water. Not the cleanest, but I was desperate for some cleaner clothes. So I filled a bucket and hand washed all my clothes this morning. Then I just came into the peace corps office to take a shower because they have clean water and electricity. I have electricity since Tuesday night. I took a bucket bath Monday night, but had to put back on dirty clothes, so it was time to do something about it.

My school is not open yet although the teachers have been showing up to get things back together. I had to move all the comptuers back up to the lab from downstairs where we put them to stay dry. The principal is not requiring attendance until the school gets water because it is just not safe without it. Hopefully school will reopen on Monday.

I have some pictures and video of the hurricane from the hotel, so hopefully I'll get those up soon. I'm workin on getting a website I can post them on so you won't have your email box filled.

Take care and I'll talk at cha soon!

-Oliver