Update: Florida Sept. 20
So, I do believe we were up to day 3.
In the early hours of the morning I was awakened by the sound of wind and rain pounding on my windows. And I mean pounding. I thought they were going to break and we'd be sucked out into the storm (the whole outer wall of the appartment was glass). I looked at Kassey and she was still asleep so I thought it best to go back to sleep myself.
We all go up pretty late again and the weather was still pretty crappy. Raya said it had woken her too and she had almost come into our room. The only thing we could think of was that if Joe and Lou hadn't picked us up we still would've been trying to walk home when that weather hit. (I should point out by the way that at this stage we all thought Lou's name was Luke - the significance of this comes in later).
So with the weather crappy it was pretty clear we weren't going to be going to beach today. Instead we decided we'd get on the bus and go to the mall. So we found out where the malls were and then rang the bus company to see which buses to take and when they came. The message of the bus companies hotline said "due to inclement weather conditions the buses will not be running from midnight Monday to Wednesday morning." This was when we realised something more serious was wrong.
We tried to turn on the TV (we'd told Raya's host aunt that we didn't need the cable on but we assumed there'd be something on free to air) but could only get a very distorted version of the weather channel. All we could make out was that the hurricane was closer than we had thought and people were closing businesses or something of the like.
Somewhat worried I called my host mum. When she wasn't home I left a message and then called Tammy and Tim instead. They were able to tell us that Miami (45 mins drive away) was being evacuated but were unable to give us any status on Fort Lauderdale. They did however give us the number of the hurricane hotline.
I rang the hurricane hotline and was told that the hurricane was moving away and we should stay put indoors. When I asked if we should get food and water we were told we should have done the day before.
We decided we should be fine and sat around the house bored.
Finally later in the afternoon we decided to call Joe and see what they were doing. After reintroducing ourselves we apologised for having lied about our ages and arranged to meet them at Joe's house (just accross the road) for drinks later that evening. That was enough to have us getting clothes together and doing hair and make up for much of the rest of the afternoon.
Finally the time had come, we were ready, we'd had dinner, we headed out went accross the road to Joe's house. I must admit we were pretty nervous. For a split second we even considered taking a knife but decided against it. When we got there I insisted on going in first but everything seemed to be fine.
We had a few drinks and had an interesting night (info to which will be friend locked in the next installment).
All for now.
Kat.
In the early hours of the morning I was awakened by the sound of wind and rain pounding on my windows. And I mean pounding. I thought they were going to break and we'd be sucked out into the storm (the whole outer wall of the appartment was glass). I looked at Kassey and she was still asleep so I thought it best to go back to sleep myself.
We all go up pretty late again and the weather was still pretty crappy. Raya said it had woken her too and she had almost come into our room. The only thing we could think of was that if Joe and Lou hadn't picked us up we still would've been trying to walk home when that weather hit. (I should point out by the way that at this stage we all thought Lou's name was Luke - the significance of this comes in later).
So with the weather crappy it was pretty clear we weren't going to be going to beach today. Instead we decided we'd get on the bus and go to the mall. So we found out where the malls were and then rang the bus company to see which buses to take and when they came. The message of the bus companies hotline said "due to inclement weather conditions the buses will not be running from midnight Monday to Wednesday morning." This was when we realised something more serious was wrong.
We tried to turn on the TV (we'd told Raya's host aunt that we didn't need the cable on but we assumed there'd be something on free to air) but could only get a very distorted version of the weather channel. All we could make out was that the hurricane was closer than we had thought and people were closing businesses or something of the like.
Somewhat worried I called my host mum. When she wasn't home I left a message and then called Tammy and Tim instead. They were able to tell us that Miami (45 mins drive away) was being evacuated but were unable to give us any status on Fort Lauderdale. They did however give us the number of the hurricane hotline.
I rang the hurricane hotline and was told that the hurricane was moving away and we should stay put indoors. When I asked if we should get food and water we were told we should have done the day before.
We decided we should be fine and sat around the house bored.
Finally later in the afternoon we decided to call Joe and see what they were doing. After reintroducing ourselves we apologised for having lied about our ages and arranged to meet them at Joe's house (just accross the road) for drinks later that evening. That was enough to have us getting clothes together and doing hair and make up for much of the rest of the afternoon.
Finally the time had come, we were ready, we'd had dinner, we headed out went accross the road to Joe's house. I must admit we were pretty nervous. For a split second we even considered taking a knife but decided against it. When we got there I insisted on going in first but everything seemed to be fine.
We had a few drinks and had an interesting night (info to which will be friend locked in the next installment).
All for now.
Kat.