Rainy Season

So as many of you are aware it is currently rainy season here in the Philippines. And unlike rainy season in some other regions of the world where at say 2pm it will start raining and then at 4pm it will stop, to the point where you can almost set your watch to it, here that's not the case. It rains whenever it feels like it and it can last for day of straight rain. Sometimes it stops and then theres sun for about 15 minutes and then it starts pouring again. However you can go several days with no rain. Its very unpredictable.

So you may or may not be aware that there is currently a Typhoon hitting Manila. A Typhoon is a hurricane, but on the Pacific. Here in Subic we are what you would consider a 2 hour drive from Manila, but because of traffic and roads, its more like 4 or 5. Either way we are a safe distance from the Typhoon, in that all we are experiencing is continuos heavy rains.

The school and where I live is where the American army base used to be (in an old officer's house, so mine's kinda fancy, by 1950's army standards). So say what you will about the army, but they knew what they were doing. The whole thing is built on top of a hill, there are canals and drainage systems that you wouldn't believe. So while the rest of the Philippines is under a foot of water we're good. Everything's wet and there's puddles everywhere, but there's no flooding. Except for my classroom...

Now the first day of school was suppose to be on Tuesday (which was yesterday, we're 12 hours a head of EST) however it was cancelled due to the heavy rains and the fact that many of the students and support staff live in lower areas so they were under a foot of water at the time. We had a rain day. Today the same thing happened. So now the first day of school has been pushed back twice.

The other thing you need to know is that when the built the school they correctly decided to build all of the school above ground, no basements. However when they decided to put the addition on for the art room someone forgot that they live in the philippines and thought it would be a good idea to build the art room into a hill, essentially it's a walk out basement.

Currently my art room is under about an inch of water. This is why you wear rubber boots.