Further dispatch regarding rain

Today I spent most of my time hanging out with the family, which has been very enjoyable and restored some of my Spanish confidence. They are incredibly patient people. Further plus: two of them are teachers, so they are completely capable of listening to and understanding my garbled language without making me feel in the least embarassed. They are the only people in Chile with whom I can sit down and talk in Spanish about politics, feminism, books, art, culture, history and........drum roll, please......make jokes. That are funny. That make people laugh. Shock and awe. In short, they are the only people, at the moment, with whom I can feel somewhat normal while speaking Spanish.

Anyhow one of today's topics was this week's rain, and next week's expected bad weather. This was very entertaining and involved physical imitations of umbrella-weilding old ladies hell bent on taking out people's eyes, puddle jumping, and the cowering masses within the super markets. It also involved much teasing from me regarding the general mass panic surrounding the terrible menace of water, and the fact that the city seems to be designed purposefully to flood at the least provocation.

The defense: "the city is old."

And so, I offer, to any who may come up with the same argument, the following photo:

This is Pompeii. Which I visited in the rain. Which I was able to walk about in unbothered due to, as visible in the picture, the clever invention of gutters as well as convex streets (not pictured).

Now, I am aware that Valparaíso has no date of foundation, however, I am fairly confident in stating that the technology was well available at the time. This business of water spouting out unchecked onto the street is just indefensible, in terms of my ability to make fun of it.

Summary: I stand by my right to be a snotty cold-climate exile laughing at the infrastructure in broken Spanish. Just try to stop me.