Hi, everyone! We've just had a very long time without new posts because we had a long school break... longer than expected. We had one week with other home schoolers in Bangkok, then 2 weeks of holiday, as it is the half-year school holiday time in Thailand... then we were called back to Tha Rua as it received the worst flooding in the memory of people here. I don't know if it made the news where you are, but little Tha Rua made Thai news as one of several places hit worst of all. We knew we had one of the best houses in town for our needs, but now we're also grateful we had one of the highest in town. It only flooded about 5" inside our house! For 2 weeks people coped with deep floods (many farmers are still waiting for floods to go down and have lost their crops) and we took our rabbit to stay with us in Bangkok. We stayed there most days, while Tim came up to help church members with flood relief and do what he could in our house.

Nate and Pete (with Mommy as secretary and editor) have written this report of advice based on their experiences, in case you ever find yourself in a flood:

The Big Flood in 2010

Nate and Pete Noble live in Tha Rua in the province of Ayutthaya, Thailand. This year, it was one of the places that flooded the most when the Pa Sak River overflowed. After our experience, we have some good advice.

If you know it’s going to flood you should make sandbags and you should make more than you need, because you never know how much you need and you can also give other people some too.

When it floods you need to take furniture upstairs to the second floor, and after the flood you have to clean up and maybe you have to revarnish the furniture you couldn’t take up, like we did. Nate got to varnish his own school desk, and Pete had to buy a new one.

When it flooded in Tha Rua, we went to the OMF Center, called the Bangkok Mission Home, because it was flooded almost up to our waists. The water is dirty and can have lots of germs and fungus.

Trucks won’t go in water that is higher than the exhaust pipe, so we had to leave our car at a cousin’s house that wasn’t flooded. Our father saw a truck with a pipe connected to the exhaust pipe pointed up so the man driving the truck could drive in a lot deeper water.

Where the water is really deep, like where our church is and where our friends who play on our soccer team live, it’s better to use a boat. It was cool the way the church made a walkway and a dock above the water out of benches. The dock was made of a bed. The boat we bought was about 2 ½ meters long. We got a chance to paddle the boat, and the captain said Nate paddled so fast that he just had to steer. Pete was looking for alligators and crocodiles. We didn’t see any, but several places some people did.

We bought emergency supplies for people. We bought life jackets, food, and cleaning supplies, which our father gave to other people. If you’re staying at your house during a flood, you will need food which doesn’t need to be cooked because you might not be able to use your stove or electricity. Sometimes the toilets don’t work any more.

Being in a flood can be scary and can be an adventure. Pray about it and ask God to look after everything.

This is Nate and Pete Noble signing off.