Day 29

I woke up today and the water was back on! Then later the power went out, but then 30 minutes later it came back on. I can no longer trust my utilities. Is my power on is my water off... I don't know what to believe anymore. I bought a candle today. I think someone should take away my man card till I burn something unscented. I did get to go to Betsy's church this morning and chainsaw things though, that was fun. I just hope all this power and water nonsense has resolved itself by monday. Word of advice never play the game spoons with a Canadian, they have strange rules. Why are candles not manly? Because they smell good? I'm still playing with fire. Is it ok if the candle smells like gun shot residue, and if so can that same idea be applied to tea? Because I have seriously tried tea that tastes like gun powder. Hurricane Irene is still a class one, and working her way up the coast. The worlds oldest person turned 115 this Friday, her name is Bessy Cooper. She is so old. I have nothing further to add on the subject. We will know by tomorrow whether Leo will be staying till may or not, very exciting. Its a lot of work being the only guy. I'm going to sleep but first answer me one question, what is significant about this series of numbers. 854917610320

Day 28

Ahhh, Friday. Here at last. I'm conditioned to like Fridays... It really means nothing to me here. Another day, another storm. So last night I woke up at around 10pm in a Nyquil stupor wondering what was going on because people were screaming and I could hear a few large vehicles outside my window, it took me a good ten seconds to realize that my light was on and the fans were running, then I noticed the trucks outside were from the electric company, which lead me to realize that the screaming people were happy, cause the power. Sweet, I set my clock, then my alarm and went back to bed. Now that there was electricity I was very optimistic about students coming to school so I woke up, got ready and went down stairs but again there was only one student. Even after I told Keven personally that we were having school even he didn't show up. Sad day. I spent my morning chopping trees in the back field until I was seconds from heat stroke, then I went back to bed. I woke up just in time for lunch. After lunch I made an unfortunate discovery. I took my afternoon dose of Dayquil and went to wash out the cup but no water came out of the sink! So I ran from sink to sink turning them on with the same result! My worst nightmares were being realized. No water. "In hot conditions (such as Puerto Rico) Dehydration can set in within and hour"-Discovery fit and health. I'm probably going to die... "In severe heat, an adult can lose as much as 1.5 liters of water through sweat alone"-Scientific American Luckily the school has an emergency water supply on the roof. You can't drink it though. It's been sitting there for a long time. So I can take showers, maybe I'll smell good at my funeral. No way. I'm being cremated, did you no that in America when you are berried your body is first pumped full of preservatives. That was unrelated, anyway I volunteered my tree climbing and chainsaw wielding skills to Betsy's church tomorrow. I'm going alone and they only have like one person who speaks English, awesome sauce. I will communicate threw my skills with a chainsaw, or interpretive dance, whichever I'm feelin at the time. Congratulations you made it to the end of my post, you will now receive a random fact, because learning is good. The first couple to be shown on a sitcom sleeping in the same bed was "Mary Kay and Johnny", gross. The wee lads probably won't get that one.

Day 27

So we had school today, one child showed up. I guess its hard to tell people we are having school when they can't charge there cell phones. Still working on those carrier pigeons. Oh well, we'll try for school again tomorrow. I woke up sick today, no fun, but we went to CVS and I got medicine and Puffs plus, with lotion! My favorite. I'm starting to wonder if we will ever get power. I hear that the storm that hit us is a class three and building strength, that's not good. Everyone at the school is doing well though. Elizabeth is finally not sick! We're all excited about that. I hope the kids come to school tomorrow, they're good motivation for me to work harder. Quote, today's quote is from Tess' little brother who is visiting us. By the way I asked him if I could quote him in my blog, he said yes, poor choice. "That is a true statement; and it is true" -Wade

Day 26

Still... No power. There is a tiny bug in my candle that is shaped like a lizard. As you might have noticed the lack of power is testing my sanity. We cleaned out our fridges today, letting go of the food we hoped to save. We also fixed the generator, I got to take apart the carburetor, it was very fun. That's why I like being here, I get to take apart engines, play in trees with chainsaws, man things, things I didn't get to do working behind a desk at home. Wade and Leo got a lot of work done today, they mowed the lawns did the dishes and cleaned out the fridge, it really helped. School tomorrow, even though we don't have power. We have decided to go on without it. Who needs electricity anyway, over rated. I'm just glad that we have water. Interesting fact, in New Zealand there are ten sheep to every one person! I'm naming one of mine Wilbur. To confuse people.

Day 25 August 23, 2011

Still no power. Leo woke me up this morning saying something about eggs and breakfast. I wasn't 100% sure since I had just woken up and I was very sleepy. So I got up and went to the kitchen and there were eggs and toast being cooked. I was very excited, we get to eat all the food because it will all go bad without power. We got a lot of work done today. Leo and wade cleaned up a lot of the random leaves that were all over the school and I got to play, I mean work with a chainsaw all day. First I chopped up a bush that was blown over, and no Dad neither of them have been the President. Then I chopped up the top of a tree that had broken off in the storm. After that I got to climb up into this huge tree and cut off branches that were too close to my dorm. These were not little branches either, these were huge branches that when I cut them off, the whole tree swung back and forth, so fun! Today wasn't all work though, we did get a beach run in to cool off. Can't miss out on those after storm waves. I miss electricity. I'm really hoping I don't have to wash all my clothes by hand.  I did get our generator running though, its not very big.We used it to run the freezer in the kitchen so all our meat wouldn't spoil. I think I'm going to steal it to run the laundry machine. I guess we are going to try to have school tomorrow. If there is power we will do a full day, if not we will try and send the kids home at lunch, we'll see how it goes. The End

Day 24

The power went out last night in the storm and hasn't been back on for more than 2 minutes since then. Everything is a mess from the storm the roads were covered in debris. We lost a few trees on our property, some were just tipped over and there roots were pulled out of the ground. Others were just cracked in half right in the middle. By the way I  am righting this post in a notebook by candle light. The storm was still kind of happening today so we didn't get to do a lot of clean up. luckily there wasn't a whole lot of flooding so we weren't trapped at home. So I mentioned yesterday that the door to the outside in my room leaks water when it rains. Well, last night I put towels in front of the door and my window that lets some water in as well. So I woke up this morning at around 9:30(no alarm clock) and I was really excited about the storm so I jumped out of bed and ran to the window but before I could get there I just about tripped in a puddle of water that had collected on the ground in my room. I filled up an entire mop bucket with the small lake that had formed over night. It felt like "Where the Wild Things Are", I would have loved to take a ride across it in my PJ's.  I would love to see what the storm is doing right now but unless the worlds largest game of telephone make its way from Haiti, I'm just going to have to wait till the power comes back on. Or find a radio... Or I could get a  carrier pigeon to fly a message to America! Anyway that was my day, writing in the dark hurts my eyes. Quote! "Jesus" -Peter Miller

Electricity

The power is back! I continued to blog while the power was out except it was in a journal by candle light, old school. So the following entries are the posts from the storm.

Day 23

Hurricane! But before I talk about that It has been brought to my attention that a large number of people have been reading my blog, and as our friendly neighborhood spider man always says with great power comes great responsibility. So with that I would like to take advantage of my readers, before reading on it would be greatly appreciated if you would pray for our ministry. Pray for the students we have now, the students that have graduated and the students God has yet to bring to our school. Pray for the families of the students, that they make come to now God the way that we do. Pray for our staff that God would give us wisdom and understanding and the energy to face what is to come. Please pray for the school in the area of finances as we face some recent challenges. We understand that prayer is an extremely powerful tool and is always appreciated. Thank you. Now about that hurricane, right now 8:44pm august 21st tropical storm Irene is rapidly approaching our island. Wind speeds are at 60mph now, it won't be considered a hurricane until it reaches 73mph, but it is expected to do so by the time it reaches the Dominican Republic. For the geography challenged that is right next to us and the storm's next destination after it passes over us. I'm excited, but at the same time sad, because school is cancelled tomorrow so I don't get to see the kids.  I'm sure the almost hurricane will find a way to distract me. Also we don't have the clips necessary to put up our storm shutters so I'm in for an interesting night. Betsy has also informed me that lots of water will be coming into my room through my fire escape. So I have a mop bucket and towels ready, oh joy. I went to a deaf church today and it was cancelled because of the storm so like two people were there so we just watched a video sermon in sign language. It was about finding joy in the hard times. I'll be thinking about it at three in the morning tonight when I'm mopping up the water in my dorm. OK the storms getting pretty bad and the power is cutting in and out so I'm going to post this before I can't... Quote! Really quick. "For the man sound of body and serene of mind there is no such thing as bad weather; every day has its beauty, and storms which whip the blood do but make the pulse more vigorously." -George Gissing I guess he's never had a tree fall on his car.