Welcome to Monsoon Season...

Well, we woke up this morning to BRIGHT sun. Felt like little hamsters waking up with our eyes all squinting open (or would that be closed?). It seemed extra bright because we were just introduced to the monsoon. Impressive amounts of rain. We got 2 inches in 12 hours during the day yesterday. More than 4 the 24 hours before that - I couldn't get up the guts to go check it and dump it. Then this morning the wind had actually blew the little gauge over. We were blasted just before sunrise. Amazing.

As upset as we were the first evening of the serious rain - it was entering our home! It came tumbling down our stairs and blowing under the door. Thankfully the windows didn't leak. Well, by yesterday - a mere week after the first major leak - we simply ring out another towel and sop up the leaks & shrug our shoulders, even with our bedroom walls seeping. Yes, seeping. Funny how our perspective changed!!

This is the "first" rain for this new house so we get the pleasure of discovering the kinks and leaks.

The girls played in the rain a couple of times yesterday. The Les & the boys drove into the "city" to celebrate Joey's birthday with a special trip to an electronic games arcade. Lots of flooded roads. Then reality of the disparity of the haves and havenots... our driver braved the rain, flooded streets, broken down bus and more rain to come drive the boys (to go play). turns out he left his family in their home (a banana leaf shack) with water inside. By the time they got home yesterday. His wife had called perched on their bed, with their 2 boys, water was 1.5 ft deep. He was stressed. We offered to help, as if there was really anything we could do. He pridefully declined. We had already given him money to replace his banana leaf roof, for which he was grateful. He was hoping to move out of the rented shack.

So as we deal with our massive house, and minimal leaks, we are humbled. One of our motivations for relocating to Chennai was to open our kids' eyes to the reality of life elsewhere. Les and I thought we were aware, and we were aware. simply aware. Now we are truly humbled and at a loss to describe our emotions in dealing with reality. Our children will be better people for the experience, I hope ;)

So this morning, as clouds build again over the ocean, we genuinely enjoy the sunshine.

PS - this was written on Nov 7th. It took me this long to get the photos downloaded and then uploaded. It's rather overloading me! Just kidding. Life goes on . We have since had another torrent of rain. Over 4 inches last saturday followed by 2.5 on Sunday. Amazingly enough, I had a fantastic long run that Saturday morning - running south on the ECR... we could see black clouds building over the ocean (bay... really??) as we finished up our 2 hours... the sprinkling caught up with us. We turned around (still not sure why)and ran head long into the blowing monsoon rain - what a hoot. Soaked to the bone but ironically, not cold. I kept expecting to be cold. We hopped in my friend's car (the driver had been shadowing us for the run!)Then decided to hop out walk a bit of a cool down - HA! we thought it had lightened up but NO! It rained the entire rest of the day - buckets. Tarp & towel on the Dining room door and floors, walls seeped - it was like it was no big deal. But still, we had dry beds to sleep in at night.