Is It Raining Out There? It's Raining In Here, Too.

Taking a break from all of my retroactive blog posts, I would actually like to talk about something that is happening right here, right now—shocking, I know, but try to contain your gasps, I can practically hear them in Chile. It is, once again, pouring here. When Mother Nature decides that she wants it to rain in Valparaíso and Viña del Mar, she means that she wants it to pour. And not just for a couple of hours, but for the entire day, and possibly the day after that, and half the day after that. Let’s just say that when I heard my alarm go off at 6:30 this morning for my 8:15 class, and I saw the rain coming down outside, the only thing that got me out of bed was the fact that this class had not met for the past two weeks—it was tough.

I know, Luke Bryan, rain makes corn and corn makes whiskey, and it's a good thing and all...

It has rained a few times in the five weeks that I have been here, and every single time I have found myself completely unprepared. I throw on my tennis shoes, which will invariably be soaked within five minutes of walking outside, cuff my blue jeans a little higher in hopes that they won’t soak up all of the water from the sidewalk, put on my normal coat because for some reason I didn’t think to bring a rain jacket, and grab the red Lóreal umbrella that my Chilean family loaned me, which was free in the mall one day—not that I am complaining, an umbrella is an umbrella, and it does keep my hair dry—before venturing out into the storm. 

But can we try and make your baby feel a little frisky when I don't have class?

Unfortunately, these measures rarely do much good because the entire town slopes down towards the ocean, and there is no real drainage system for the water on the roads. Therefore, most roads become rivers within the first couple of hours of the rain; and not gentle streams, but actual rivers with several inches of water coming up into the tires of passing cars. Because we walk everywhere, Rachel and I have slowly been practicing our techniques for fjording such rivers by hunting down the corners with somewhat elevated crosswalks, and noting which roads can become so flooded that the water flows over the curb and begins filling up the sidewalk.

The silver lining on days like today is that the minute that I get home with my sloshing sneakers and jeans soaked to the knee, my nana hurries me into my room to change into sweats and dry socks and puts my shoes and wet clothes in front of the estufa to dry out. Once I hop into bed with my cup of tea, I am cozy as can be—rhyme unintentional. And I have to say, watching the rain through my bedroom window while tucked up in bed sipping hot tea is not a bad place to be—alright, that one was intentional.