here, there, everywhere

The rain has stopped, but the lake in Lenin Park is still overflowing (above: the back of a submerged park bench near the normal edge of the lake); this is just across the street from where I'm living at the moment. More photos of the park to come, but for now I'm just keeping my fingers tightly crossed for Obama (and for the floods to end!).

Above: the ride home Friday, in the middle of the heaviest rainfall Vietnam has had in 24 years. My motorbike stopped working fairly early on in the storm (and is still waiting in the parking lot at work, where I left it after pushing it several flooded blocks) and I would have had to walk home from work, as there were no cabs or xe om in sight, but was rescued by Iain, who rode his bicycle out to pick me up and then heroically pedaled me, some massively heavy groceries (if you were going to be rained in, you'd want a bottle of wine or two, too) and my camera 2 miles (or 40 minute!) home. The ride back was insane - the streets near my school had turned into thigh-deep rivers of muddy, petrol-slick water and we had to hop off the bike and slog through at one point. The few people who were out on the roads seemed to be in pretty good spirits, considering that most of them were tending to similarly broken motorbikes, and a few cars were still trying to push through the rain (see above, where the water had receded somewhat) but it was still pretty nuts.

Two days later, the rain has pretty much kept up, torrentially and more relentlessly than I would have ever thought possible, though there've been some dry patches and Iain's street has remained fairly unflooded, thankfully. Nonetheless, I was a bit relieved to be woken up by a text at 6:30 am today informing me that the school was closed - yay for having an actual weeked for once, even if all we're doing is staying inside listening to the rain.