Rain, rain, go away...

Walking around over the last few days I've been reminded of the monologue from Forrest Gump about the different kinds of rain in Vietnam. Forrest goes on about "big, ol' fat rain, stinging rain, rain that blew in sideways..." and I'm beginning to understand what he means now that I've seen Western Cape's rainy season. It has been incredibly cloudy, cool, windy, and rainy here for the last few days. The problem with rain here, though, is that it always comes with wind, which makes umbrellas completely useless. If you try to use an umbrella, the buffeting winds will blow the umbrella inside out repeatedly until you eventually surrender and put the object away.

The nice thing about the rain, though, is that it has a sort of unifying effect on all the people on campus. Rain, of course, falls the same on everyone. So the people who are ordinarily fashion plates have hair and clothes just as soggy and rumpled as those of us who simply grab the first clean thing out of the closet. It also brings people together in our huddling under the eves of buildings and in doorways. There are clusters of people everywehre and it is suddenly simple to start a conversation with something like, "Lovely weather we're having, eh?" I walked all the way down from Upper Campus today with someone I barely know and we had a lovely conversation, which probably wouldn't have happened on a warm sunny day when people can wait around for people they already know to emerge from buildings.

Something about rain always makes me want to accomplish things. I feel as though since I'm inside I must get things done. Today I went and found out how to check out books from the Short Loan desk at the library and put Rand on my print quota so I'll be able to print papers and such. Not to mention that it's much easier to accept sitting inside and reading texts for class when it's impossible to go out and do something else.

Now I'm off to trudge through the rain to get home and have some toast and curl up with a book.