Yesterday, we were invited by our friends Tomoko-san and Jun-san to Japanfest, so we could watch her perform tea ceremony, or chado. It was really beautiful and so interesting, even the Chipster paid attention!
Yesterday was also our sixth anniversary, and we went to South City Kitchen to celebrate. M had the pork with salsa verde and cheddar grits, and I had the spring mountain trout with asparagus and mashed ginger sweet potatoes. Delish! We followed up with a trip to Starbucks to work on the New York Times crossword puzzle and had an interesting time getting home in the rain.
This weather is really crazy, and a little scary at times. We were virtually trapped today but finally figured out how to get out of our neighborhood. M stayed home from work, based on our difficulty getting home from dinner last night. We took G in late to school and brought him home early to avoid the worst of the weather, but as soon as we got him home it let up and the buses got through. It's hard to know where the line is between careful and paranoid, but we are definitely walking it!
This is Highway 278 in Hiram, closed. Our first of three flooded and impassable roads on the way home:
This is the view from our kitchen window - the creek in the property behind ours has turned into a lake and is all the way up to the fence separating our land from theirs. It was actually higher than this earlier today but the water levels are rising and receding very quickly.
Here is one of the blocked roads near our neighborhood. Despite the bridge, this normally looks like a normal road between two fields. In fact, before today I had never even realized that this is a bridge:
You can see a slideshow of some of the local flooding here.
Here are Jennifer and me in front of one of the Samaritan's Purse trailers.
This is the street where we helped. Coincidentally, this is the same street I had tutored on a couple of times in the past, but that family did not seem to be affected at all. Their house and a couple of others at the front of the neighborhood must have been on higher ground. You can see that all of the sheet rock and some belongings are just piled in the front yards to be taken away later. These houses are down to the wall studs, and none are inhabitable. The whole neighborhood has a very strong mold smell.
The creek back there is what did most of the damage in this particular neighborhood. It picked up this shed and flipped it over.
You can see where this shed started out and where it ended up. I didn't realize it at the time, but this person's back deck, which should have been where I was standing, is to the right of this photo, in the trees.
Here is me in front of one of the houses in the neighborhood. Samaritan's Purse gave us shirts, face masks, and gloves. There were also plenty of opportunities for us to eat sandwiches or barbeque or get water or soda. It was a very good atmosphere for the volunteers.
This is the house we worked in. We heard that it was really beautiful before they tore out everything. We mostly swept out insulation and got carpet and linoleum glue off of the floor.
Here is the cul-de-sac near the front of the neighborhood. On the very right edge of the photo, you can see the edge of a dumpster. The houses mostly have missing garage doors from the flood. Some of them seem to have been damaged by water only, others seem to have been hit by something within the garage carried by the water.
