It’s the rainy season, and the cool season her in Long Xuyen. This means that I haven’t had my A/C on for days (hallelujah!) but also that it is cloudy and rains almost every day. This Saturday we had a particularly interesting rain storm. Some students were over chatting at about 1 pm, just about to leave for class, when it began to dump buckets of rain. This is way more serious than cats and dogs. One of the students jokingly “forecast” the weather: 500 mL of rain in the next hour, no end in sight. We laughed and they departed for class after it was obvious that it wasn’t going to let up for a while. I went into my room to relax. The water, meanwhile, was pooling up around the guesthouse at an alarming rate. After about 30 minutes reading I decided to lay down on the mattress in the middle of my floor for a short nap (it’s Saturday, after all). I was shocked when I lay down on the mattress and water sloshed out from underneath it…I lifted the mattress to find a giant pool of water in the center of my room, and when I looked to where it had come from, I saw that I had a river flowing into my room from my balcony door. The holes that let the water out of the balcony were clogged with leaves and grime, and all the dirty water was flowing into my room. I got a mop and the housekeeper to come help me open the holes, push the water out of my room with towels, and clean the floor. Then I looked over my balcony and saw that the guesthouse was surrounded by a mote. A deep mote. We’re talking, you would need a boat to get anywhere. Wow. Here’s a picture from the front door:
