Play, pouring rain and power.

You will remember from last week's post that we had standing water in the school due to an overflowing tank in the attic.  One casualty of the flood was the large bean bag that sits in the library - it got soaked.  Holly (one of the moms) suggested we dump its innards out onto a tarp so the sun could dry the styrofoam pellets and hopefully remove the moldy stench.  But the tarp was dirty.  So we had a slip 'n slide day during P.E. last week to "clean" the tarp.  The tarp didn't really get very clean (Chad and I had to wipe it down after the fun) but the kids had a good time and thought they were being helpful at the same time.  

Aunt Mary, at the top of the hill with the hose; Uncle Chad at the bottom of the slip 'n slide taking pictures.  


Every Thursday night the MAF team gets together.  Some nights we pray, some we just sing, others we study a portion of the Bible or we have a team meeting.  Last Thursday, I was riding my scooter home from one of these get-togethers when it started to rain.  Not just rain but rain in torrents!  By the time I got home, I was soaked.  And I am not just using that word for effect.  I was dripping water.  I was able to wring water out of my clothes.  I would have taken a picture of my drowned-rat self, but the electricity was off and without lights it would have been too dark a picture for you to really get a good laugh.  I actually was laughing by the time I got home.  It was just so, so,....  I don't know - ludicrous?  It was either laugh or cry.  I decided to laugh! :o)

The electricity being off brings me to another aspect of my life here.  We have been having regular power outages.  Not an uncommon thing here in Tarakan.  For a variety of reasons, there isn't enough power to supply the entire town with electricity all of the time.  So neighborhoods take turns having their electricity shut off.  Like today - the electricity was off from around noon til about 3:00, which is actually a very short outage.   BUT - just last week, a generator was installed at my house because my house is also the school.  It is very hard to concentrate on your school work when your are dripping sweat.  So our wonderful base manager (Brian Underhill) brought the old generator from the hangar and got it up and running for the school.  How lucky for me that I live at school! 

 

A yellow generator is a thing of beauty forever.  I had lessons on how to get it up and running.  Not as hard as you might think.  In fact, not hard at all.  Kind of like starting a car. 

 

Well, that's all for this week.  Tune in next week.  I'm going to Balikpapan (an hour flight from here) for a little  R and R.  Maybe I'll have some interesting stories from that trip.  Talk to you later.