Hope it's not Agatha all over again

Oh tropical depression. You just couldn't stay away.

It has been raining since last night and thus everything is wet. The dogs, the birds, the towel I had drying on my roof. I woke up several times last night to the sound of rain just being dumped on my roof and the water is starting to saturate through my ceiling. The city is thoroughly flooded, the fields are full of corn stalks falling over, and people are holed up. But in my town, people are out and about for one reason: the bridge. Yes, the bridge, which has sketched me out many a time, has collapsed. I only heard about it when our pastor's wife called to tell us we were on the news for having a collapsed bridge. So I put on my raincoat and my rubber boots and headed out. Luckily the torrential downpour part was over and it was only drizzling.

It is probably not a good sign when you are walking across a bridge and the presence of a car will make it shake a bit, but it's even worse when a fair bit of rain will make it collapse. Everyone was up and about around the bridge. Yuna and I got into a conversation with some women from one of the aldeas we work in who asked about who we were, what we were doing here, etc. Just casually chatting on the edge of a fallen bridge. The police had an unofficial line up around the condemned part of the bridge but people (including moi) were crossing it to get a better look. I wasn't quite as brave as some people, who were continuing to cross the other lane of the bridge right past the part that fell. My theory is that both lanes of the bridge were likely constructed in the same way. If one side has given out, it is logical to think that the other side is also likely to be structurally unsound. But finally the police and firemen, who had just been standing around with the rest of us, decided to take on some responsibility and ushered everyone behind the official police tape they found and put across the entire bridge. At this point it got boring just staring at the bridge and the water rushing below. The river had grown quite a bit and it looked similar to how it looked during tropical storm Agatha last year. But no worries for me. One bridge has collapsed, but the other seems to be in decent shape, so I can still get in and out of town.

Most of the shops were open as usual and everyone headed into the center to buy up everything after staring at the bridge for a while. The eggs were disappearing pretty rapidly, but everything else seemed to be in good supply and the prices weren't all jacked up.

As always, some people assured me that the worst was over, while others claimed that they had heard that the rain will last until Saturday. Peace Corps has us all on standfast of course, so I won't be heading out of here for the next few days. I guess we'll see how things turn out. So if you hear about Guatemala on the news, just know that I am fine and dry here in my fairly structurally sound house. And pray for those who were not so lucky. One of my neighbors had problems with their roof so they braved the rain to put a tarp up, while another house in town apparently collapsed and tons of mud got in. Also pray that tropical depression 12E (weak name if you ask me) will move through here quickly.