Monsoon Commute

The Year End Concert came and went... thank goodness! The concert basically consisted of me running around like a mad woman getting students into costumes, out of costumes, back into costumes, and then back to their seats. I only managed to "misplace" two children during one of their recorder performances; So, all in all, I measure it as a success. Unfortunately, my camera froze after recording only one performance! The one that I managed to get (mostly) is attached below for your viewing pleasure. :)

So- I have one more day of school left, and I was feeling pretty lucky that I never had to make my daily commute in the rain... until today. And it wasn't just rain, it was an incredible monsoon that was pouring buckets by the second. Usually these things pass after 5-10 minutes of rain, so I decided to wait it out and head into school a bit later than usual. After an hour of pouring rain, it didn't let up. I begrudgingly slid on my poncho and headed out on my bike. The amount of water splashing into my face was a bit too much, and I had to take it very slow since my contacts were literally being rained out of my eyes. The heavy rain hitting me through the poncho wasn't the worst part of it all... it was the flooding. Almost my entire route to work was completely flooded with over 2 feet of water. I was a bit nervous that my bike would give out with all the water, but I managed to make it through. Knowing that the numerous pot holes and other random obstacles in the street were still there, but covered completely by muddy flood water made it all the more scary. I essentially crossed my fingers and drove through, resulting in some very wet pants but successful avoidance of anything that could knock me off my bike. Apparently floods like this don't happen too often, so I was just incredibly unlucky that I had to drive through it. The most unlucky part of the day was the fact that I left my passport at home, and since I needed to scan it today in order to get my visa renewed, I had to spend my lunch break braving the weather, yet again, in order to pick it up. With all the flooding, the main street back to my house was in stand-still car traffic. Having a motorbike came in handy here as I was able to drive up on the sidewalks and squeeze between fenders. The traffic was so bad that I had to head the wrong direction down one-way streets just to get back to my house. After picking up my passport, I was out in the rain again, although the floods had subsided a bit and I only had to drive through two heavy flood areas. By 5pm, the sun was shining, and all evidence of the floods had gone. I was quite relieved that I didn't have to put my feet into some Hanoi run-off again. In fact, I should shower it all off right now.