No Show Hamish

Last night got very exciting- the students were all briefed about an incoming cyclone (hurricane). Cyclone Hamish was forecasted to just stay along the coast (I'm slightly West of the coast) but had been very unpredictable. The staff told us that it was very possible that the cyclone would just give us rain but that if it turned and came inland we could have 150-200 km per hour winds, so we were going to prepare the Centre. Previous to that, all of yesterday afternoon we had known that a cyclone was coming, but we had only been told that it would rain a lot and that our tree planting for the next day was canceled due to severe mud. So, last night after supper we were split into groups and given tasks to prepare the Centre for the potential cyclone.

Students and staff put x's of tape over all of our (already strong glass) windows, took everything that was loose on the porches and put it in big sheds- which was a lot of stuff since we basically live outside. Some students had to walk the property to check for dangerous stuff laying around. My job was to super-stock the 2 bathrooms inside the Centre, because if the winds were bad enough all 30 students + 10ish staff+a family that lives on site would all be living in three [small] rooms. After that was finished, we returned our cabins to continue cyclone-proofing. We had to pack all of our belongings into garbage bags, move our beds to the middle of the room (our four bunks got very cozy) and pack our daypack with essentials, passports and clothes to have down at the Centre if we had to leave our cabins in the middle of the night.

Well, when I woke up at six am I was happy that I wasn't going to be required to live in a small room with lots of people, but my next thought was 'Dang it. My clothes are all in garbage bags shoved under my bunkmate's bed'. So I proceeded to go down the Centre in my pj's to brush my teeth and complain about the lack of cyclone with the other students. We are probably going to be stuck with a week of rain, but at least my assignment that was due this morning at 7:30 was delayed!