Panama Update #75
October 29, 2008
Yesterday afternoon (Tuesday) at work I had a few extra minutes and went out to the playground to play frisbee with the students during their gym class. The skies got real dark, as it does here at some point on a daily basis. Life just goes on normally with the rain, as it does in Minnesota with the snow in the winter time. But every once in a while people really stop what they are doing and take notice. Yesterday afternoon was one of those times. As we were out in the field playing catch there was a super loud crack of thunder as if it were right above us. It turned out to be right above us because a second later we saw smoke coming from across the street. A large tree was struck by the lightening and it fell on and smashed a car. This caused the car's alarm to go off and for smoke to come out of the engine. It rained incredibly hard for about the next hour. It rained so hard that the drainage ditches around the school overflowed a bit and water started coming in the front door of the school. The custodians did a good job of sweeping it out and there was no damage. All this happened at the time of dismissal, so loading the students on the buses took twice as long as usual because they had to cross a newly formed (and temporary) small creek to get to their bus.
