my world is a flood

a lot has happened lately that i wanted to share, but it has all been trumped by the flood in nashville.

hillary, tori, vicki, ashley and i were all in nashville this past weekend. the winter girls and i drove there thursday afternoon and then ashley came in from missouri the next day. friday was fun and productive. we woke up friday morning and apartment shopped and settled on our original #1 choice. that night we met a friend from college that now lives in nashville and ate some yummy tacos, (after i got yelled at by the taco nazi) and saw the movie date night. all around, it was a great little friday.

saturday was a different story.

we woke up and it was raining, and as it turns out that was expected. by the weather people that is, not by any of us, a group of 5 people without a single umbrella. by chance tori had a rain coat with her, but other than that we were holding sweatshirts and t shirts over our heads. hillary had a preview day at the school her and tori are going to attend, and after she was finished we headed to one of our favorite spots, pancake pantry.

after our bellies were full we headed back to our hotel, and just about got there until we came upon a river going across the road, blocking us from going the final mile to our destination. luckily we had a gps and simply went around the road and came out on the other side. we could still see the flood on the road and couldn't believe that so many people were driving through it!! we decided to park in a parking lot right next to the flood and watch people get stuck. we were not disappointed.

not only did we watch people get stuck, we saw a truck plow through the flimsy police tape we watched a policewoman put up to "close" the road, pushed a car up an incline into a parking lot and picked up the driver, josh, of said car. even though josh lived about 30 miles away, we said we would drive him home. we had no other plans for the afternoon and he couldn't get in touch with anybody to come get him. we put josh's address into the gps and toke off towards murfreesboro.

this is where we ran into the problem. to get to murfressboro from east nashville the straightest and quickest way is to get on I-24. well get on I-24 we did, and sit there for an hour we also did. every now and then cars would pass us going the wrong way on the shoulders of the highway and we wondered what they thought they were doing. somebody even caught our attention and said to turn around, and then laughed at us when he realized there were 4 of us in the back seat. finally a cab driver hops out of her van, starts talking to truckers to get them to shift a little and single handedly makes an exit ramp out of the entrance ramp right next to us. our gps readjusts and we decide we'll just get around this little problem and get josh home. that's when we hear on the radio that apparently I-24, along with other roads are very heavily flooded.

we were about to turn around and head back to our hotel, after dropping josh off at the hotel were his car was parked. hillary and i heard another route to murfreesboro on the radio and we were confident we knew what to do. the man talking was very clear in saying that you have to go the wrong direction first, then when you are far enough out you can turn back onto a different road and head back in. we knew it would take a bit longer, but josh still needed to get home. we do this and finally get josh to his apartment and then head back the same way we came to our hotel. all in all, we were with josh for about 4 hours.

when we got back to our hotel we watched the news and saw how bad the flooding really was, and understood why people from home were freaking out when they knew we were out driving. we saw images and video of I-24 and knew why we sat there for so long and why cars were going the wrong way. there were cars FLOATING just a few miles ahead of where we were sitting. oh yeah, and a portable building was also floating down I-24.

when i finally talked to my mother i told her to turn the tv onto any channel and she would see how bad it was there. WRONG! it took her a while to find anyone talking about it! finally on the weather channel they made mention of it. MENTION. while people not in the area weren't hearing much of the flood, we heard and cared of nothing else. we learned on the morning of may 2 that the record for rainfall in the month of may had been shattered. we learned that there wouldn't be church sunday morning, that it wasn't safe to travel to church and many churches had been turned into shelters.

there is much devastation in nashville. i, along with hillary and tori were shocked at how little people talk/know about it here, only a few hours away. we love nashville and already consider it "our town" and leaving was sad for all of us. i've seen twice now that there is a great need for clothing at the shelters. the entire town needs to conserve water, cutting use by at least half. there are many ways to get updates on whats happening in nashville, one of them being this twitter account.

if you want to help but aren't sure how and going there isn't possible at all, the american red cross is always a place you can donate to and know that your funds will go to those in need. i realize the devastation doesn't rival that of haiti or hurricane katrina, but there is a town of people that are hurting and in need, people that have lost everything except for whats on their back.

i understand now that seeing the same 2 or 3 images over and over again on tv is completely different from seeing a woman standing in front of you crying because her car is under water. hearing about people being stuck in a town is completely different when you are the one stuck, unable to go more than a mile down the road either way. this is the first natural disaster that has reached me in a personal way and i hope that recounting my experiences will make it personal to the people that read this. my heart is broken for the people in nashville, and even more than before, i feel like i can't get there soon enough.

read Hillary's blog for pictures and videos of nashville.

-meghan