Hurricane Gustav

On Thursday of last week everyone started taking the storm seriously. It was projected to hit Friday morning. Most businesses shut down early (including David's and mine) and most everyone was either shopping for non-perishable foods or nailing up hurricane shutters on their windows. Luckily, the storm moved north leaving us with minimal damage. We did have a great time at our hurricane sleepover. The curfew for the island to be indoors was at 4:00. That is when the fun began...

We have the best landlord. He had some guys come up and close off our windows for us. Almost every single house on Grand Cayman had hurricane shutters or wooden boards over windows and doors. It was kind of bizarre seeing all these houses boarded up.

Of course everyone put valuables in water-tight containers, just in case of flooding or roof damage. I don't have too many valuables out here, but I did make sure that my favorite shoes were stored nicely in our washer/dryer and that Guitar Hero was safe and sound before we left our apartment.

Since the hurricane changed paths, most everyone decided to stay home instead of going to the shelter, so it wasn't the huge crowd that we expected. But, Lance, Olivia (both work for Kirk Freeport. Lance is from Indianna and Olivia is originally from Singapore), David and I, and Jamie, and Casey all enjoyed one another's company at a sleepover. It started out with watching a movie on a laptop with David's "system." He brought up some speakers from his office downstairs and hooked them up to the laptop. We all sat on office chairs which were actually quite comfy during our featured presentation.

Our delicious hurricane supply food. The dried mangos were a hit.

After the movie we played some cards and had the radio on in the background. A hysterical DJ was playing some nice 70's tunes and using phrases such as, "Tonight, it don't matter what color you are, or where you came from. We are all in this together."

We took plenty of pictures and then fell asleep watching The Office. It was only too appropriate to watch that show while sleeping in cubicles.

Lance and Olivia were well prepared with their blow-up mattress. Lance was here during Hurricane Ivan in 2004. He stayed in this same office building, but with 75 other people. Imagine how croweded and hot- no electricity or running water. The building is solid as a rock. The foundation is made for a 7-10 story building and they only built it up to 4 levels. Lance said during Ivan they watched out the window while roofs were ripping off other buildings and flying through the air. Scary.

Casey, Jamie, myself, and David all slept on this foam mat that Casey is displaying in the above picture. Poor David was on the end and I kept pushing him off. Poor Jamie was on the side of me that David usually sleeps on, so I guess I was sleeping pretty close to her- oops! Poor Lance had to wake up every hour to turn off the alarm system.

We woke up the next day to a small amount of debris on the streets and some pretty big waves. Overall, it could have been a lot worse. We didn't even need to go to the shelter or board up the windows or put our valuables in the washer/dryer in the first place. But, if we didn't do all these things then we wouldn't have had as much fun as we did. I'm not kidding, I was almost home sick for the cubicles, office chairs, and friends the next day. Because of all the fun we had we are welcoming any future hurricane scares as long as they switch paths right before they get to Cayman.