Gamede

So this weekend i experienced my first cyclone. Yeah, that's right. Cyclone Gamede struck the Ile de la Reunion this weekend.

Friday at school all the other teachers could talk about was how the cyclone was coming. You could look out at the ocean from my school and see the waves getting choppy...

Saturday we woke up to wind and rain and were unable to go to the market, but the town seemed reasonably alive, so i tried to go to the library to work on law school financial aid applications, but the library was closed. The weather worsened throughout the day, and we lost power for about 30 minutes in the evening.

We woke up Sunday morning to spotty electricity, no running water, no phone service, and no tv. Luckily the electricity stabilized pretty quickly and the water came back in the mid-morning, though i'm still skeptical about drinking it.

Today phones and the tv are back and most businesses are open but schools are closed. We weren't actually directly hit, so damage is pretty limited, but there's one major issue: a bridge in between where i live and where i work is severely damaged and may not be reparable for 2 years. Worst case scenario, Vanessa and i would have to move to the other side of the bridge. (My brilliant mother's comment: "well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.")

So yeah, that's my adventures in tropical living story for today. A couple of adventures in foreign languages stories to round out this entry:

The French verb for "to eat" (which i want to do right now, actually) is "manger." The French verb for "to miss," in the context of "i miss all of you very much," is "manquer." Recently i was talking to one of my classes about Texas and a kid in the back raises his hand and asks me what we eat in Texas. But like i said, he was at the back of the class, and it wasn't exactly quiet, and maybe i was feeling just a tad homesick - in any case, what i heard was "what do you miss about Texas?" and what i replied was, "my family and friends of course!" Yeah, that got their attention.

Secondly, a couple of weeks ago went hiking with a bunch of other english-speakers and somehow we ended up right in the middle of a MASSIVE group of french/creole hikers of all ages. We continue along in their midst speaking English, and somehow they assume 1) that we're German and 2) we don't understand any French or creole. So we're all walking along together, they're talking about us as if we don't know what they're saying, and we're playing along by exercising our severely limited German vocabulary ("weinerschnitzel?" "Schize!"), until finally, after a good half hour of us being ridiculously entertained by all this, near the very end of the trail, they figure out both that we speak English and that we know French, and the entire group just stops and cracks up. It was brilliant. But the most brilliant part of it was approaching them at one point on the trail and actually hearing a group of French people utter the 20th century's most feared French phrase: "les allemands arrivent!" ("the Germans are coming!")

ah life abroad.

Love/Miss y'all

Back to Normal*

*When normal is understood as intense heat, crashing waves, tropical fruit, and being what feels like millions of miles away from the rest of the world.

So once again, it has been a long time since an update. This time i have a legitimate excuse though, I was in India for most of January, and reluctant to abuse my relatives' willingness to let me use their internet. The trip was very nice, if a little bit too hectic and a little bit too filled with food. The weather was perfect, and it was great to see the family. Several of my cousin's have kids that are too cute for words, and so i particularly enjoyed playing with them. And of course, the other thing i particularly enjoyed was getting to see my parents, who met me there and actually came back to Reunion with me for a few days. It was wonderful to spend time with them and to get to show them around my island, even though their time here was too short.

They left on Sunday of this week and school restarted on Monday, so since then i've been adjusting back into the routine of the school week, as well as trying to combat the homesickness that my parents left me with by catching up on my e-mails. So if i owe you an e-mail - don't worry, it's on its way. I've also been enjoying the piles of new English-language books that i brought back from India:-D, as well as exercising to try to get rid of the new weight that i also brought back from there. And i think i'm going to start a once a week basic Spanish class, because the part of my brain that stores languages is clearly not being challenged enough (or because i'm a masochist).

Molly Ivins died this week and that makes me sad. But Florida's switching to paper trail voting and that makes me happy.

oh, and GO BEARS!!!

Love y'all