Power Outage - Amanda

We just experienced our first power outage. The sky was starting to look ominous around 3:45 and we were all starting to wonder if we would get home before the rain started. We were told that we had to remain at school until 4:30. The four of us in our department wait patiently until 4:30 while we see ESL teachers in the other department start to leave around 4:00. We were all waiting around until that magical time as the storm loomed closer and the winds began to pick up. Luckily one of our Thai co-teachers encouraged all of us to leave early, it was five minutes early, but we were very thankful. I headed out on my bike, something I haven't ridden in over 15 years. The traffic after school is a mad house, with 3,000 kids that's to be expected. Lloyd also has a bike so the two of us crossed the road together. I felt like I was playing frogger. We zig zagged between the sidewalk and the street due to all of the sticks on the ground. There was a tree down on the road thanks to the wind. I saw about four Thai men working together to lift it out of the way to clear at least one lane of traffic. By this time it had started to sprinkle and I was glad that I had a bike and didn't have to walk the 20 minutes back. We pulled under the awning as the clouds opened and the downpour began. We were at our apartment for maybe 15 minutes when the power went out. We ate some of the food we picked up at Tesco Lotus over the weekend, neither of us enjoyed them, with some light from our 5 liter container of water sitting on top of a cell phone flashlight (Genie's ingenuity). After beginning to listen to the most recent West Wing Weekly Genie fell asleep so I sat on our stoop and watched the rain. There's something so calming about rainfall. The power returned around 7 pm so I guess I better get back to lesson planning.