The Boy Who Cried Chantal!

Well we made it through our first Tropical Storm!

The night before the storm we got a substantial amount of rain, which is sometimes very common for Dominica, that caused our water to be turned off. I know I've mentioned it in previous posts but the short and sweet is that the Dominica as a country does not have the economic means to develop a water filtration infrastructure that will keep  up with the enormous volumes of dirt that "slide" into the water when we receive large amounts of rain. The solution is to shut off the water supply until the system gets a handle on the water. However, when the water is turned back on you don't want to even wash your hands in it for about 12 hours. It is DIRTY. So much so that when you turn on the shower there is dirt left in the bottom of the shower once the water drains.

Back to the fable of Chantal...I found out about the impending storm at midnight and the next morning I had David waiting at the IGA in a taxi when the doors opened for 1 reason only WATER!!! Every week or so I had been bringing home an extra jug of water from the grocery store but on top of the jugs I have to carry just for our everyday water consumption I had fallen way short of our needed Hurricane reserve of 7-10 days of h2o & food. David brought home 12 two gallon jugs of water and bread. I have learned from previous rain showers to NEVER go to bed with even a single dirty dish or bottle and especially A SHOWER!!! I could never go to sleep if I didn't take a shower every night bc i'm pretty super gross and sticky after a day of sweating through 2 shirts or dresses, bug spray and sunscreen, YUCK! So, what i'm saying is have all your ducks in a row every night in case you wake up with no water or there's a tropical storm possible hurricane coming!

Facebook, fb, started going NUTS!!! The students, which in turn means the spouses, anxiety was high bc there were mini's and practical exams scheduled for the day the storm was due to hit. ANOTHER FB group was started "Ross Hurricane Updates" due to the fact that in 1 hour I had 52 FB updates on the status of the storm. That brings me to my love/hate relationship with FB. Before we arrived in Dominica I checked fb maybe once/day or every other day at night. Well now, I live on the stupid thing. It is the only way we have to communicate down here. We all have local cell phones but I only have 4 peoples #'s, and as we all know, verbal communication is at an all time low.  So that leaves FB, and in an effort to not jam up everyone's news feed, 25 different groups just for the spouses. Ok, i exaggerate but i swear it's something like 10 different groups. I can jump on there really quick and say "who do I call to come switch out my propane tank in US time (versus Dominican time) bc my dinner is on the stove and i'm out of gas!!!!!!" or "does anyone know what number to set my oven to in order to reach 350 degrees" (our ovens have a 1-10 dial! ha). The hate part is that I'm constantly on this annoying computer, ipad, iphone and see a bunch of junk that just sucks me in and wastes my time!!! And...I have kinda become that person I get annoyed with that constantly comments, likes and banters on fb. I think a little of my daily addiction is the temptation for adult conversation. In the US if I was with the kids but feeling like i had something I wanted to tell someone I would pick up the phone or better yet send a text message to 1 person. So too much time on FB...Ugh...NOT one of my goals for Dominica. I'll keep working on that...

Again, back to Chantal. Btw...Classes got cancelled and campus was completely closed. This is pretty good news for some students unless you were the ones pulling all nighters to prepare for your tests just to put it off another day. It was super nice to have David at home all day and the girls didn't know what to do with themselves. Soooo, that morning as David was getting water...I was kicking it into prep mode. I made chocolate chip, coconut, banana muffins and chicken and rice soup before 9:30 a.m.  It rained a good part of the morning and the winds were normal for Dominica, we patiently watched the live radar out of Barbados for the constant update on how far the storm was out and how quickly it was moving. We are suppose to get the storm around 12-2 p.m. but around 1:30 we see the storm barely south of our island take a sharp turn west. It was super weird...almost like a gust of wind came in and moved the entire storm over a hair. Well, we were that hair bc it completely missed us but probably only by about 20 nautical miles. Some of the island suffered severe land slides bc of the rain and little wind but all in all we had a quiet uneventful day eating muffins and soup. Barbados and Martinique did get hit pretty good and sustained damaged. I am super thankful that the storm surpassed us but have an eerie feeling that that means the next one will be a doosy, hence the name of the post!! All the students were fussing bc classes were cancelled bc of nothing but there was no way of predicting that it would miss us just barely and hit ALL of the surrounding islands. If one student got hurt due to the storm than people would really be outraged, you know!?

In the future i'm going to try to post more frequently even if it's just a few paragraphs with or without photos. I always want to wait and post when I can include lots of pics and have plenty to say but I'm really don't have near the time on my hands that I thought I would. This is good and bad. Bad bc there are things that I'm probably not going to be able to accomplish here like working a few hours/week, etc...Good in that all of my energy is going directly to my kids and husband. I am certainly having my fair share of identity crisis, stay at home mom, new country, adjustments but all in all i'm super satisfied and fortunate to have this time with my babies. Who by the way are being wonderful. Banks has turned a serious corner and is being the sweet, obedient, helpful, loving, amazingly bright child that she's always been. And Eloise has totally sprouted!! I don't know how else to put it...her little personality and determination, but in a different way than Banks, is starting to show. She is still the happiest, lovable child I know...you just want to love on her all the time!  I'll have something really neat to show you about Eloise in the next post...stay tuned!

love you and miss you everyday!

xoxo
weezie (that's for you peanut :) - have no idea why but my brother Phillip has always called me weezie...
*** NAME THIS MOVIE: "Heeya take a whack at weeza"????*****

 girls movie night!

 flowers from the tree in our yard.

 ripe avocados and tomatoes...rare!!

  sweet little 10 year old named Ella who loves Banks & Eloise

 They can't get enough of there daddy!

 Geri, this is the shirt from our trip to Barcelona!!!

 so much Sass...this one!

 Mommies big helper and wearing her watch :)

  little angel girl

 such a stinker!!

  MOO!!! On our road...I'm only about 10ft from him

 David's breakfast morning before his test!!  BACON