FUCK WILMA!
WE SURVIVED HURRICANE WILMA!!!!
As I am sure many of you already know, either through the international news coverage or my desperate phone calls, south Florida was hit HARD by hurricane Wilma almost a week and a half ago. The category 3 storm was the worst storm seen in Broward County in 55 years!!! So yeah, it did some MAJOR damage. Of course, our county was the worst hit, so we have been waiting and working to get our city back together. Josh and I lost power Monday morning and did not get it back until Sunday afternoon. Yeah, it sucked BIG TIME! We had a try fall across our cars (no major damage, thank God) and our apartment complex was a wreck; however, we were lucky enough to come through the storm being fine. But let me give you a little glimpse into "post Wilma."
Okay, so in Indiana I never went through a "gas outage" or anything like that, and I guess I really haven't gone through one here. Our governor (the president's brother Jed) well, he made sure we had enough gas for after the storm. What he didn't make sure of is that the gas stations would have power. People were in desperate need of gas (mainly to power generators) and were having to wait in 5-7 hour lines. It was INSANE!
Life with no electricity is bad, but probably not in the ways you would think. We were over the missing of television and internet, it was much deeper than that. Every morning we had to take FREEZING cold showers. We were eating off of a small propane stove for the first few days, but ran out, and of course there was no propane to be found in the whole city, so we were stuck eating cold food. At night, it was just blackness. We had like a billion candles, but it wasn't enough to light the entire apartment. Not to mention these south Florida temperatures. It gets HOT here. Luckily a cold front went through, but like today's high is 87...could you imagine not having air for that? It would be like dorm life...without the fans!!!
Okay, so once the power was restored in our complex, life got MUCH better. We are extremely luckly to be living so well right now. Most of my friends from work are still without power and many of them still can not drink their water without boiling it first (kind of hard to do with NO ELECTRICITY!) My school suffered some damage. A tree went through a kindergarten classroom and the second floor of the new building (where my classroom is) has some water damage. Hopefully my room will be fine...Speaking of school, I haven't had it in FOREVER. My students missed school the Friday before the storm, all last week, and this week is canceled as well. That is like 11 days with no school, and we aren't even sure we will be able to go back next week. At this point, 80% of the stop lights aren't working in Broward County, and traffic is TERRIBLE! We have nearly 1200 school buses that would have to navigate with no lights, no to mention all of the children that would have to cross streets without crosswalks, and most of the schools are still without power. Needless to say, they are not sending us back until conditions can get closer to normal. I know it is crazy, but I WANT to get back in the classroom. I'm afraid my students are going to forget what they have been learning, and we will have to waste another week with review...AHH!!!
Well, that is it for now. More to come later...