A Day of Very Heavy Rain

Today was without doubt the hottest day since I got here. During the second half of the morning it

Heavy Rain

was getting more and more difficult to concentrate during lectures - and then, at lunch time, it began to rain, and rain and rain. This wasn't rain like we might get in Ireland, this was more like being under a shower. A sign of how hot it had been was that after the first shower you could see steam rising from the hot ground. Of course, the very heavy rain cooled things down significantly (to about 26 degrees) and that was very welcome.

The heavy rain has caused chaos in the city - as a matter of fact, there has been a minor landslide immediately behind the seminary and a sizeable piece of land has slid down and hit some homes - nothing has been knocked down but some houses have been surrounded by mud. These same people were hit recently by something similar - that time much more damage was done and some people lost much of their possessions.

There is no real help for these people from the government. Families do what they can; parishes try to help, but it is really quite a bleak situation. The students from the seminary help out in this area on a regular basis and will be involved in trying to help with the clean up.

Miguel Studying away

I spent the afternoon helping one of the students to prepare a presentation for another teacher. This proved to involve a bit more than I expected as he was really having difficulty getting a handle on what was expected of him. I'm not sure that he is much better off now, but at least he has something ready to present.





 Finally, I am able to include some pictures. These are just some snaps of the rain and of the chapel of the seminary together with one or two pictures of some of the seminarians, including one of the Korean students who is here - more about them in a later post.