Waiting for the Storm to Come (in a good way)

[A real storm hasn't come yet, so I only have a picture of the
beautiful flowers brought by the last storm.]

Yesterday morning I walked up the steep hill to Julie and Victor's house, below which is the LCEF office. When I was almost to the top of the stairs it started raining really lightly. At first I thought the sound was just wind in the trees, but then I felt a little mist. I sat on their small wrap-around porch waiting for Julie who was in the shower and thought about how weak this rain was compared with the tropical storms I'd been warned of. This has nothing on Portland, I thought, as I made kissy faces at their shy black lab puppy who kept peeking around the porch corner.

Julie and Victor are the co-founders of the foundation, and are the kindest people. Julie took me downstairs to the office to talk about which Spanish language class I should be placed in come Monday. Thanks to Alex, my tutor extraordinaire, I could actually speak to her a little in Spanish and translate the paragraphs she gave to me. I can't wait to start classes.

When we were finished, I noted the light rain, and she filled me in on the tropical storm thing. "They'll come, all at once, a couple times a week, in the mid-afternoon. Black clouds roll over and you'll hear thunder and see flashes of lightening and it will start dumping rain." Sounds fun to me. But, she then told me that however much you want to go walk in the rain, stay inside. She told me the story of Dean, who thought he could ride his bike home really fast in the storm. A lightening bolt hit the ground right in front of his bike tire.

Later that afternoon, when I was floating around in the ocean, I watched dark clouds come in from the hills. There were many breaks in the clouds, including one over the beach, where the blue sky and sun shined through. It didn't rain, but the wind started blowing. I looked down the water to see if any of the locals got out of the water, and told myself that I would get out when they got out. They never did, and the clouds never broke open with storm, but I watched them hesitantly throughout my swim.

After the adult English class I went to with Nancy on my first day here the same almost-storm rolled in. The town gets darker and windier, and I get excited. That night, I saw Victor and Julie digging in the yard behind the Educational Center, which is a small, one-room building where most of our classes are held. They said they were making a Mexican sweat lodge out of bricks and that it would be finished in a month so I could try it out. I can't imagine wanting to sweat more, but it sounds cool.

They also told me they'd probably be out there until they got rained on, and since Julie hadn't warned me about the lightening, I took a walk around the Jardin, across the public entrada to the beach and stood watching the waves for a while, feeling the electricity of the weather. Maybe I imagined this electricity, because the storm never came. I walked back to my house excited for the afternoon when it does and I can sit in front of Stephanie's huge high windows and watch it.