The photo above is of one of the decors in the place I am staying at. Read the story below, and wait till you realize how ironic this is.
Relax. There’s more to come about this week, but first I’d like to inform you about how I almost went swimming on Monday. No, I don’t mean for recreational purposes. It was Monday night, I was reflecting on my first day of class in my room at the place students and I are staying at for the summer. Keep in mind, it has rained almost every day since I’ve been here, but Monday was quite different. I enjoy having background noise, like the calming sound of raindrops kissing the ground outside my window. However, there was nothing romantic about the storm that flooded the home.
The photo above is a shot of the lobby area that flooded.
Relax. The rain intensified, and I heard people outside of my room speaking in concerned voices. Eventually, I decide to check out what was going on, and two rooms away from mine, two students were using brooms to sweep out the water that began flooding one of their room’s. The scene was comedic for about 10 minutes as we tried to help out the inhabitant of that first room.
Relax. Eventually, the water continued pouring into the hallway that contains my room, another, and the room that was already flooding. Mine, being the furthest away from the water, took a while to make contact with the flood, but like the other rooms it was doomed. What followed was an attempt to battle the water making its way under my door. I placed a towel down, but in about a minute it became a sponge and I was back to sweeping water in the opposite direction. Eventually, we all stopped sweeping because we realized it was just going to continue flooding. Half accepting that my room was flooding, I moved all my things to higher ground.
Here is a video of my room as the water kept rising.
Relax. The water eventually reached up to my ankle, and we concluded that we had to move to higher ground for safety purposes. Thus, we all migrated to the kitchen. In the moment I didn’t realize how the electrical current of a simple strike of lightening to the water in the open-air lobby could find its way to all of our rooms that had been flooded. Well, the point is, we could have died at fault of mother nature. But of course, you’re reading this, meaning we’re alive (at least the humans affected, but some of people’s things did drown).
When the rain finally decided to calm down, an amazing woman named Sandra and her son came to help us clear out the water. After her arrival, the students in the home quickly mobilized to sweep and squidgy out our homemade pool.
Here is a video other students took as they were finishing up clearing out the water. Credit: Heather
According to the owner of the place, the home had never flooded like that before. The way I see it, it was Mรฉxico’s way of saying, “Bienvenidos”, or welcome. One can never really measure the odds of events like these happening, especially in another country with plenty of new environments. It could have been a lot worse, but it was something I personally had not experienced before. Still, I am appreciative of the amount of teamwork that spurred out of the moment. There were various rooms on other floors of the home (there’s three floors) that did not flood, but that didn’t keep others from helping out those who were affected. And at the end of the day, we all got a little work out in from the experience.
Relax. Thank you mother nature for reminding us that as a collective, we can overcome adversity, even through minor experiences such as this one.