Flood Blues

It’s all about the flood here in big bad Bangkok. This flood is on everyone’s mind. You can’t get away from it. I walk down the street and its piles of sandbags & quickly built low concrete walls in front of all the stores. My hospital here even bricked up their lower level parking lot. The grocery store shelves & 7-11 shelves everywhere are still empty. I haven’t been able to find the big size of water since I got back from Vietnam 2 weeks ago. It’s near impossible to find the small bottled water so when I find it, I stock up. The weekend market—a huge tourist attraction, and major money maker—actually closed its door for the entire weekend (a major let down on my part because I was going to get gifts there, ugghh). The government issued an emergency 5 day holiday this past Thursday. Even MBK, the big tourist mall had a quarter of its stores closed. Every time I talk to a local they inform me that the flood is coming, yes, any day now it is coming. Actually today I was in a cab on my way home from my friend Lex’s place and the cabbie starts telling me out of the blue, in broken English, that the water is moving slowly but it’s on its way. All you have to do is walk outside to see that this flood business has the community visibly shaken. The city waits with baited breath, day after day, expecting to wake up to a pool of waste water seeping into their homes and businesses.  The first thing I do when I wake up is look out my sliding glass door to see if there is any water.

In the midst of all this I keep thinking of how much I love it here. I think of this because I have fears that the school where I teach will not re-open any time soon and it makes me worry about my job security. I teach in an area that was hit hard by flooding and I don’t know how long it will take to actually clean up the flood damage to Saipanyarangsit. The schools in Bangkok will not re-open now until November 7^th, and mine is supposed to start again Nov. 15^th. I have my doubts considering the panic that is not letting up, and the talk of imminent flooding to the city.  I feel stuck in limbo with no idea when I will go back to work or how long they will extend the semester when we do. A 3 week break has turned into 2 months off.

I guess I just needed to vent these things on paper. My biggest fear is that this crappy flood business will get in the way of finishing my full contract here which would break my heart. I’m not even close to being ready to go home for good yet.