Rain, Rain, Go Away...and Don't Come Back!

So it's still raining here in San Juan and it's not sunny, at all!  We are experiencing some interesting weather and we're not sure we like it.  There hasn't been a dry day in about a week or so and at first, it felt refreshing and a nice change, but now everything is damp in our houses, it's constantly raining, and it's actually pretty chilly.  Like I said in my last blog, it's cold here, which means 77 degrees.  However, that really is cold here.  Last night I wore pajama pants, socks, and a sweatshirt to bed.  That's cold!  It is apparently "winter" here, but the hurricane has screwed up the weather. 

I'm not sure if you can see it, but there's a lot of water in the roads here.  Oh, and there's a mototaxi (red).

Right now we're in a "standfast" where we are not allowed to leave our towns because of the current road/weather conditions.  We actually had a volunteer visit today before we found out about this, but we were with our tech trainer and language facilitator, so it was ok.  We went to Diriamba to observe a volunteer there in her instituto, but since it was so rainy, and pretty bad in her town, less than half of the students showed up for her first class and then they all had left by the time we arrived.  This was a bummer because I was really interested in watching her, but we did get to talk to her about her classes, her living situation, and how she creates materials for her classes.  She had some great ideas so I'm really glad we got to talk with her.  I'll be requesting some materials via mail from you all soon, but I want to wait until I'm in my actual site so I don't have to carry them around with me.  I will tell you some of the things though so you can get ready :)  She uses old/used magazines to cut out pictures to use as visuals for class, which is a great idea, because it's pretty hard to find pictures to use for class down here and printing is pretty dang expensive, especially if you're going to make copies for students.  Also, construction paper, markers, and crayons really come in handy.  Last, packing tape works really well for "laminating" papers or small posters because, like I said, it's wet here and there's a lack of resources, so any way to keep them in good condition in order to last more than a week is a good idea.  So, if you're wanting to help me out, please collect some of these to send, but please wait until December :)  I might have a new address by then, depending on where I am, but I'll keep you all posted.