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The Great Flood

        One beautiful, quiet morning a couple of weeks ago, I was very contentedly sleeping in when I heard loud banging on the front door and someone yelling, "Hellooooo!" Seeing as my roommate, Lizzie, and I have an open door policy, I found that very strange. Most of the other missionaries know to just let themselves in. "Mehh, It can't be that important," I thought, "I am going back to sleep." A few minutes later, I get woken up again by a text message from Lizzie, who was standing in the kitchen, saying that our apartment was flooded.
        I jump out of bed in a flash and open my bedroom door to find myself standing in a couple inches of water and water spraying out from under our kitchen sink. That banging on my front door was my neighbor, Hannah, who had jumped out of bed into a lake in her bedroom.  Water continued to spray as we waited for maintenance. Not only did our apartment and the apartment next to us flood, but our front porch, back porch, and the hospital supply storage area under the apartments were also under a few inches of water. 
My tranquil morning suddenly wasn't so tranquil anymore as we all tried to figure out how we were going to dry out our couches and searched for mop buckets. My roommate was the lucky one as she had to go in for her shift at the hospital so she missed out on all the fun. Thankfully, my friend Eliza came to my rescue balancing a big broom on her scooter. We swept and mopped, swept and mopped, swept and mopped a little more and dumped water out of the flooded kitchen drawers. It took a couple of hours to dry out the apartments and a few days to air dry the storage areas but at last everything had returned to normal.  Well, as normal as life can get in Honduras UNTIL ... 
     I returned home to my apartment a couple of mornings later after working a night shift to find a big tarantula attempting to climb up my couch! I knew I had to act fast. With a big red plastic cup in my hand, I stuck up on him really quietly. A swift move and a few girly shrieks and I had him trapped on the floor under the cup. PHEW! Considering that I had done half the work trapping the tarantula, I figured that it was only fair to let Lizzie take care of him so I left the cup on the floor with a note for when she woke up. But I couldn't sleep because I kept thinking about him escaping and seeking revenge on me in my sleep. When I returned to check on him, he was attempting just that. Two of his legs were sticking out from under the cup and he was working on a third. I quickly stuck some paper plates under the cup, ran outside, and threw him over the cliff. Good riddance 

  
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Location: Balfate, Honduras

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