Tropical Storm Noel

Well it has been quite an adventure this past week with Tropical Storm Noel swinging by. The rain started a little bit during the day on Saturday, picking up intensity at night and then basically pouring until about Wednesday, some more drizzling on Thursday, and by Friday it was nice and sunny. I would have never imagined it could rain that much. It was probably a 5000 Year storm event...haha.

The worst part of the storm was during the night on Sunday. The wind was really blowing and the rain was coming down at an insane rate. When I woke up it was horrible outside. Trees were down and further up the road from us half the road had washed away. As gossip spread further throughout the different villages, we would eventually find out that four bridges had washed away and both of the roads out were covered in mudslides.

We had enough food to last until about Sunday, and obviously plenty of water with all the rain that had come down, but it was still really nervewracking at times not knowing exactly how we were going to get out of there. Luckily, one of the tech trainers had a working cell phone so we were always in contact with the peace corps office. Since they knew that we would be low on food on Sunday they wanted us out on Saturday, and they decided we would be evacuated by helicopter.

Friday night we had a small get together with the people from the village to celebrate the month we had spent together. My host mom was very sad that I was leaving because her husband had gone to the hospital right before the storm began and now she would have to spend the nights alone in her house. It was really sad leaving but I reassured her that I would definitely come back and visit since I'm in the country for two years. She even gave me her phone number so that I could call her sometime.

Come Saturday morning we had quite a few spectators come to watch our departure. It would be everyone's first time riding in a helicopter so none of us really knew what to expect. I went in the first group with four people, including myself. We had a lot baggage so we weren't able to take off solely vertically, so we lifted off the ground a little and over a row of trees and descended into the valley below in order to gain velocity. (Sorry for this as most people will not understand, but it felt like we were on a spaceship on our way to planet Endor to visit Wicky.) Apparently, to everyone on the ground it looked like we had crashed, and some people even started crying. They ended up seeing us further in the distance though, so everything was fine. Some of the villagers cut down trees so that it would be easier for the pilot to leave with the next group of people.

So, I´m fine and all the other volunteers and trainees are safe. We are back in the hot, sweaty, polluted Capital a week earlier than expected, which is not that great but I'll deal with it. I'm here til next Tuesday afternoon, when I go to visit what will be my permanent site for two years. I'll be back in Santo Domingo the Sunday after that, for a week, then I will leave for my site for good.

My site is about 45 minutes away from the second largest city of Santiago and about 45 minutes away from the tourist area of Puerto Plata. Anyone who wants to visit can fly into either of those airports, or we could work something else out depending on where you want to go.

I'm in the process of uploading my photos to Snapfish now instead of Google since there is no limit on the amount of photos you can upload using Snapfish. I'm having some trouble with my memory card though so it might be awhile before I get all the pics up. I'll update my pic links in a bit.