Hello, friends.

I had been planning on coming home from college over Columbus Day weekend so I could visit my family for my mom’s birthday. I was not anticipating having to leave campus in the middle of the week due to an oncoming hurricane. On Wednesday morning, the students received an email saying classes would be cancelled after 3 PM that day and would remain cancelled until the following Monday. My 2 o’clock class was also cancelled, so I only had one 50 minute class. My mom texted me recommending that I leave as soon as class ended and head home early.

I went to class and listened to other students talk about where they were headed for the extra long weekend or heard their frustrations about the inconvenience of the storm cancelling their vacation plans. One student asked my professor where she was planning to go. She laughed him off and said she’d endured Hurricane Andrew, that there was no reason to leave, that she’d be fine. This was before the mandatory evacuation was issued that night.

“You should be having a hurricane party,” the professor told us. “That’s the attitude you should have.”

Well, I had no intentions of having a hurricane party, and any parties I did attend would be taking place three hours away in my hometown. My suite mate, Carly, and I packed our bags, as she lives in Arkansas and couldn’t take a quick trip home. We left school and, since I had a quarter tank of gas, I wanted to stop to fill up. The first gas station we stopped at was out of gas. In fact, every other gas station was also out, save for one lone Shell station, where everyone was rolling in like it was the last oasis in a dessert. We gathered our share of gas and I drove us to home, jamming to Hamilton the whole way.

That night, we received an email from our school saying that the entire city of St. Augustine was to be evacuated, including the school. Carly and I expected to return to school Monday and begin classes Tuesday. But Hurricane Matthew had other ideas. Our city was flooded severely, not entirely unexpected given that St. Augustine, in its attempt to keep the city as authentic as possible, has very poor drainage. However, the city was not just flooded but utterly devastated. Buildings were lost and unbelievable damage was sustained. It took days to pump the flooding out of the basement of the school. Cleanup is still going on, within the school and around the city. Dorm halls reopened Wednesday and classes resumed Friday. Some things have been different, such as the enormous pile of damaged items in the school’s breezeway or that the mail hall is still being cleaned.

Overall, I have been incredibly fortunate in this storm. I’m so glad to have a family so near that I can go home to in a crisis, and I’m glad to have a city full of friends I want to get back to and school I don’t want to miss. The city itself is going to be okay. As everyone has been saying, hashtagging, and expressing in their daily lives and efforts, we are all St. Augustine strong.

I hope everyone is doing well in the aftermath of the hurricane. This has been a bit of a somber update, but that’s all for now. Thanks for reading.

We are all broken–that’s how the light gets in.
― Ernest Hemingway

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