Believe it or not, it has rained 3 of the last 4 days in Cairo. AND it rained about a week and a half ago. Now, we're only supposed to get rain 2-3 times a year, so I guess that's it for 2011?
I was kind of shocked the first time it rained (a week and a half ago). I came into the room where Johnny and Abby were sitting and the conversation went something like this:
A & J: Hey it's raining.
Me: (blank stare) What?
A&J: It's raining!
Me: Raining?
A&J: Yep.
Me: Like outside??
A&J: Yeah...
Me: (run to the window) Whoa...
Rain is a somewhat messy affair here. There's rather a lot of dirt and sand around, so you end up with a lot of mud even if there's not much rain. Also, the rain itself is somehow dirty, as evidenced by the state of our car after it dried - don't count on a rain shower to CLEAN your car if you live in Cairo.
So, we had that one rain shower and I figured that was it for my year in Egypt (I know others who have experienced rain only once in a year here). But lo and behold, on Friday it poured again! Of course it started right before our Africa Live service at church. Remember, our church meets outside. Under a canvas, but outside nonetheless. Fortunately it stopped before the evening service.
Then it rained AGAIN on Saturday. Whoa. Again, it was raining as we were about to go to church, so we dug out umbrellas from the back of a forgotten shelf in a closet and carried them with us. Once again, the rain stopped right before the service, although the dripping of water through the canvas didn't. =)
Amazingly, today it rained AGAIN! This is seriously unheard of. We had our first community Bible study this morning and had to all squeeze into the church fellowship center to escape the rain. And about half way through the power went off (which is less unusual than the rain -it came back on in about half an hour). Then when we got back to the office after Bible study, we found that the internet was down. We have an office network where we save all our documents, emails, etc, and which we can't access without internet. So from 11:30 till 1:00, when I went home, we hung out in the youth office and chatted about travel experiences and movies and whatnot. The internet still wasn't on when I left.
I rolled up my jeans for the walk home and tried to avoid cars, puddles, and especially cars driving through puddles (not so easy). I noticed that the mysterious sand pile that appeared in front of our building a couple days ago is soaked through. We're not really sure what it's for, although last week we saw some guys mixing concrete in the street by our house (the old fashioned way - using shovels to mix the rocks, cement, and water). They just put it in bags and took it away (apparently our street is a good place to mix concrete?). Oh the interesting things that can happen in the developing world...
I was kind of shocked the first time it rained (a week and a half ago). I came into the room where Johnny and Abby were sitting and the conversation went something like this:
A & J: Hey it's raining.
Me: (blank stare) What?
A&J: It's raining!
Me: Raining?
A&J: Yep.
Me: Like outside??
A&J: Yeah...
Me: (run to the window) Whoa...
Rain is a somewhat messy affair here. There's rather a lot of dirt and sand around, so you end up with a lot of mud even if there's not much rain. Also, the rain itself is somehow dirty, as evidenced by the state of our car after it dried - don't count on a rain shower to CLEAN your car if you live in Cairo.
So, we had that one rain shower and I figured that was it for my year in Egypt (I know others who have experienced rain only once in a year here). But lo and behold, on Friday it poured again! Of course it started right before our Africa Live service at church. Remember, our church meets outside. Under a canvas, but outside nonetheless. Fortunately it stopped before the evening service.
Then it rained AGAIN on Saturday. Whoa. Again, it was raining as we were about to go to church, so we dug out umbrellas from the back of a forgotten shelf in a closet and carried them with us. Once again, the rain stopped right before the service, although the dripping of water through the canvas didn't. =)
Amazingly, today it rained AGAIN! This is seriously unheard of. We had our first community Bible study this morning and had to all squeeze into the church fellowship center to escape the rain. And about half way through the power went off (which is less unusual than the rain -it came back on in about half an hour). Then when we got back to the office after Bible study, we found that the internet was down. We have an office network where we save all our documents, emails, etc, and which we can't access without internet. So from 11:30 till 1:00, when I went home, we hung out in the youth office and chatted about travel experiences and movies and whatnot. The internet still wasn't on when I left.
I rolled up my jeans for the walk home and tried to avoid cars, puddles, and especially cars driving through puddles (not so easy). I noticed that the mysterious sand pile that appeared in front of our building a couple days ago is soaked through. We're not really sure what it's for, although last week we saw some guys mixing concrete in the street by our house (the old fashioned way - using shovels to mix the rocks, cement, and water). They just put it in bags and took it away (apparently our street is a good place to mix concrete?). Oh the interesting things that can happen in the developing world...