Hurricane Sandy passed us without too much excitement. As you can see in the image below, the storm did not actually cover the entire island as originally predicted but instead passed over the East side. Those of us on the West saw wind gusts for several hours, a relatively small amount of rain, and a good number of power surges and outages.
In a hasty effort to depict what our experience was like, I threw together a couple video clips from our day.
What you don’t see is a lot of time spent staring out the window, reading, watching a movie, and hanging out on our host parents’ balcony while chatting and overlooking the yard in the evening. Their yard suffered minimal damage. One large tree branch snapped off a tree that was already dying, another oversized flower bush and a few stray palm branches were bent to the ground. That was really it. So we feel fortunate and it sounds like our friends on the other side of the island, who faced the brunt of the storm, fared safely as well. Today, the day after the storm, the schools are still closed but the community center eventually opened up and things in town are getting back to normal.
Simply Intentional 
Glad to read that you, the dogs(!), your host family, and the community are safe. Those thunderstorms are amazing, aren’t they? Surprised, though, that you weren’t consolidated… We send you best wishes! Bob & Adrienne