What an adventure!

It is still the rainy season. It can rain several times during a day--with sunshine in between. You don't get much warning. Two weeks ago on Wednesday, we canceled outside play, all three times, before school, after snack and after lunch, but it still cleared up and sun was shining so the children had their first swimming class in the afternoon before French class.

This Wednesday, the kids were looking forward to their second swim class. The weather looked good. It did cloud up and rained briefly, cutting after lunch outside time a little short. But the sun was shiny when I checked with PE teacher, Kerri, about the class. Yes, she said, come even if it is raining lightly, if it rains harder, we'll go into the clubhouse for the class. If you check out the first photo in an earlier blog "swimming at Club Atlantic" you see the clubhouse behind the pool.


The children are in their bathing suits, with their dry clothes and towels in swim bag to change after the swim and we walk across the field. We are about half way to the pool, when it starts to rain lightly. We go through the gate and Kerri suggests that we put the bags under the roof, next to the cafe, (you can see this in the second photo in earlier blog, "swimming at Club Atlantic") so their things won't get wet. Just then, we hear a little thunder in the distance but no lighting. Kerri said, let's just wait a minute--and I stopped a few kids who were about to take off their shirts.

Suddenly the cloud burst--torrents of rain, high winds, and more thunder. A wall of water made it impossible to move across to the club house where we would have been more protected. One child climbed onto my lap, then another, both saying they wanted their mommies. While we huddled together, Kerri kept the other kids busy with songs and simon says. The wind was so strong the rain was falling sideways. There were some other adults under the roof with umbrellas and they opened them to create a "wall" on the side where the rain was blowing. Then to our amazement, a large bird, some type of vulture, landed in the pool--swam around a little--and then climbed out and walked across the deck.

We had two mother volunteers, our classroom maid, myself, Kerri and her assistant swim instructor trapped under the roof. No hope of the rain stopping before the children had to go to French class, we decided that we would move everyone over to classrooms area, and get them into their somewhat dry clothes before taking them to the French classrooms. The group is divided into 4 classrooms depending on their level of proficiency. The staff at the club, came with big umbrellas, like the kind inserted in center of tables, and helped us walk over to the wing of the building with the French classrooms. The path was so flooded that we walked on the grassy playing field, at one point I picked up a child who just had on flip-flops and carried her over the worst of the mud. Dry shirts and socks had hastily been thrown into bags to try to keep them dry. We could not find one of the shirts. (It turned up later). Of course, the sun was shining by the end of French class and the children were departing. No indication of what had happened earlier--except for the missing shirt!

The next day, instead of starting the day with Journal Writing, the children dictated a story about the events of the day before. Several children have drawn pictures to illustrate the story and I plan to spend sometime this weekend "publishing" the story and printing copies for each family. I'll post it on the blog when it is done.