Rainy season arrives with a vengeance

Life in Cambodia is always full of challenges and the unexpected. The last two afternoons as I've been working in my classroom I had to get the mop out! Yes, the rainy season appears to have begun. Yesterday afternoon was't too bad. I know from past experience that the rain tends to drip from the top of the window frame onto the floor when the rain comes from a certain direction, and that's what happened yesterday. Since I was still there when the leaking started, I quickly pulled up some of the foam mats and set them to dry. It wasn't too bad, and by the time we came in this morning all the water had evaporated. No problem.

This afternoon was a little different. I was sitting at my desk when it started, thinking, this isn't to heavy. Maybe it will be a light shower this evening. As I was thinking that things changed, and next thing I knew the  water was streaming down the windows. I went to take a photo, but quickly discovered that the windows weren't keeping that rain out. It was coming in, and quite a lot of things were in grave danger of a soaking, including posters, and sheets of cardboard, my keyboard, and my classroom library! I quickly moved everything I could, including my desk and filing cabinet. Then I heard the sound of secondary students coming down the stairs. They'd obviously just finished an exam, so I quickly recruited some of the young men to help me move the bookshelf with the classroom library on it. The photo below shows where there water reached (and it actually spread further after this photo was taken). Each of those tiles is about 50cm across, so you can see there's a fair bit of water there. Of course, moving things that hadn't been moved since August left a fair bit of grime exposed too, so I'll be busy cleaning the classroom tomorrow morning. Hopefully some of the water will have evaporated by then. 

The rain was blowing so hard our "internal" staircases had water flowing down them, and I'm positive my classroom won't be the only one that suffered water inundation. It was like someone turned a hose on full bore at the windows and just blasted them with water. I guess the windows will be lovely and clean now! I'm just glad I was there and able to get most of my stuff out of harms way.

The rain eased for a while, and then came back again, this time blowing in the opposite direction, so I don't think any classrooms will have totally escaped the impact. Might be a bit of cleaning up and throwing out to do on Monday morning. Eventually the storm lessoned, and I looked up to see the most amazing sunset through my classroom window. The photo below doesn't really capture it, but it was just beautiful. The sky was orange and red (almost like it was on fire). As I look at it, I'm reminded of just how powerful God is, and of His promises to never leave us. In the power of the storm, and rain, I was also reminded of His love, and the promise of a new day tomorrow.