Monday, November 10, 2008
The Great Flood
Photo on Flickr, from "Hanoi Mark"
Last weekend a great flood inundated Hanoi. We received almost 2 feet of rain within 2 days! The streets were flooded, and yet for many of us life went on. My school was located on high ground, as is my neighborhood. Ryan, a young teacher from Australia, and I ended up teaching all the classes Saturday afternoon! We each had more than 50 children! On Sunday, more teachers made it to the school, but I still had to teach eight straight hours, followed by more on Monday night. I was exhausted! When I go through things like that, I'm amazed at my coping skills.
Ironically, my adventures were minor compared to some of my fellow teachers. Kenny was trapped in a school for several hours because the streets were impassable and Phil, after losing water in his apartment, got stuck on a flooded bus. Shelly tried to get to school, but her cab got stuck in waist high water and began "buckling."
Fellow teacher Colm Pierce is an extraordinary photographer. I'm including links below to his website as he took much better photos than I did:
http://colmpiercephoto.com/content/view/25/44/
http://www.colmpiercephoto.com/
(Click "Hanoi underwater" for a fantastic slideshow")
Labels: ecology, education, Ha Noi
