And the rain came

On Tuesday, four months of dry weather split down the middle and I will tell you that it rained . It seemed much as if the ocean had sent out fingers to drag the city down off of the hills. The streets were flooded; rivers ran down the hills and pooled throughout the city center. The city was like a glacier, threaded through with water at every level. This is not an exxageration:

Why have a gutter when you can have.....any other available surface, let's say the sidewalk? I discovered that day that the city is riddled with holes and spouts and pipes, so the apparent solidity of the buildings melts into liquid and everything around you runs like a sieve. The water is in the sea, it is in the air, and it even seems to be spurting up out of the ground.



Almost everyone in the street was hiding under alcoves and under awnings, because rain here is extreme weather . Now of course some of that is due to the reality of the situation, however I will have to say that I did my fair share of, "where I come from, I'd drive 10 hours in a blizzard to get back to school after break, oh yesiree, now that's bad weather, these people don't know what bad weather is..." I received little support in this from Elisa, who went to school in Santa Barbara and contests that rain is in fact just horrible. To give her credit, though, she slogged on with me.

For those of us who did continue on with our normal movements, though, it was certainly more than a little challenging. Observe the Plank Challenge:

(Notice here the man on the right getting ready to take the leap approach):

And here another making a (barely) successful landing:

It was not a rainy day to scoff at, even for a northerner. I had to wear plastic bags in my shoes for the next few days (see previous post). It did make falling asleep under a tin roof absolutely dreamy.

Today, the sun was back. Due to an odd set of circumstances involving confusion over my presence (or not) in my house, I found myself spending the night on a friend's couch. He lives in a monster of a building that juts out of the top of one of the central hills. The sun woke me up abruptly and abrasively, but it was worth it, because from the balcony the entire city spreads out below and the light was catching all of the still-wet morning buildings. The smell of eucalyptus drifted up to me from a small stand of trees and brambles on the hill below, and it was, I think, the first time that I have smelled plants in several months. I spent the afternoon walking around rather dazed and shining. An equal balance to the pleasant melancholy of rain is the bright humidity of the next sunny day.