seny i rauxa: In which our one way street became a two way road.

Hola,
Do you remember the big hill we walk up to go to the bus stop? The one that is helping with my work out? It's a one way street going downhill. I always assumed this was because it's so steep that the cars would stall out on it. Most cars in Europe are stick shifts. Turns out that cars can go up the hill when they have to. And they have to, when there is no other way out of the neighborhood.

Friday night Joe slept over his friend Oscar's house. Oscar's sister is Karina, Jess's friend so Karina slept over our house. Around 2 am the dogs started barking. I thought Rascal had to go out. I let the dogs out and back in, thinking that would be the end of it. They spent the next hours restless and barking...or howling at the wind. In hindsight we think the dogs heard something. When we woke up the wind was really blowing. So much so that debris was flying around our back yard. We didn't think much of it, the sun was shining. Around 11 I left to take Karina home. Jess, and Alexa went with us. The wind was still blowing pretty hard. So much so, that I told the kids to be on the look out for trees that looked like they were going to fall. There are a lot of tall trees around us. We came to the end of our street and went to turn right but not before spotting this to our left...

Then we turned right and found this, two houses down.

And then there was this...

So we turned around and went another way...and was waved back by a van telling me that we couldn't get through that way...and any other way we could find. So, we went home and called Karina's Mom to let her know that we might be able to walk her to the station later but now we were hunkering down. We at least had power. By this time, Sujaree, Karina's mom, had lost power at her house.

We managed to keep our power all day and night. We invited Sujaree, and her family to come over and watch the little blurbs about the storm on CNN international. It was really frustrating not being able to understand the little news coverage we could find on the local station. Fuertes vientos...strong winds. It reached over 160 kilometers an hour. That is a level 2 hurricane. I'm glad I went to the supermarket on Friday and stocked up on a lot of essentials. We had plenty to eat for dinner. The kids helped make spaghetti and a salad. The girls had baked a cake during the day when they got bored so we had that for dessert with some Strawberries I had picked up at the market.

We hadn't seen many of our neighbors until today. Today, everyone was out with cameras...some to take in the damage in others houses. Some unfortunately to look at what happened to their property. We were lucky and didn't have any damage at all. Our pool has a collection of leaves and sticks in it but when compared to what others experienced we were so very lucky. Here is what our neighborhood looks like after level 2 hurricane winds hit.

This is a little alleyway off the street adjacent to ours. I've never been sure what was up there. I'm sure someone's house but it can't be a driveway because there is no gate.

This is a picture of someone's back yard. All the green in the middle is fallen trees, that used to be a porch area.

You can see they were starting to clear this out this morning. The tree fallen in the distance has a crew working on it. They had started almost right away yesterday morning clearing trees but this is so overwhelming.

This is just a picture from the ridge above our area. Notice the sunshine. It was like this yesterday too. No rain. No clouds. Just sunshine.

And a picture of pussy willows because they always remind me of Easter in Freehold NJ. Spring is coming.

This is the one way out of our neighborhood. You go up the wrong way on the big hill make a right onto the ridge road and the you have to go under this tree to get out.

The house this tree is sitting on is also in the pictures of our walk to the bus stop. I love this house. It's so quaint. I expect to see Snow white coming out of it. I don't think anyone lives there. I have seen people working on the inside though, like they are renovating it, which just makes me more sad because it's such a sweet little house.

There is the cutest little blue and white tile planter under the window. That was smashed too.

On my walk this morning I went back toward the big hill and up to the alternate road we take to the bus stop. This route is a little quicker. This road took a beating. There were large trees down every 10 feet or so... To the right

to the left.

This was driving into town. We decided to head to the park today. The puppies needed to run and so did the kids. Even the road toward the circle in the center of town had trees down. There was a large one down in front of the farmacia. It's just a mess.

The really sad thing is that a sports center's roof collapsed killing four kids. It's scary to know that we had no notice this was coming. I've heard reports that it *was* reported but we don't watch the spanish news. And there wasn't anything in our where we check our weather. Plus, one of our friends speaks spanish and she is questioning why we weren't warned. It's just really odd weather...especially given that it was aboslutely beautiful out. So, in hindsight we think the dogs were barking at the falling trees. We tihnk they could hear all the snapping and crashing that we couldn't hear because we had the security blinds down. Here is a report from CNN.com

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/01/24/spain.roof.collapse/index.html

So, now to end on a more uplifting note....some pictures of our trip to the park. I think this is Mount Serrat.

Or this is...lol...

More snow capped mountains in the distance. I took these with Andrea's camera and it doesn't seem to do distance very well. The mountains were all very clear today.