Depressing Deluge

     The rain was out of control this week. For real guys. On Monday, I got downstairs in my lovely work outfit to discover it was pouring outside. No I did not bring an umbrella to Chile. Yes I forgot to ask my parents to send one when they sent my rain jacket. Yes I am too stubborn to buy one off the streets that I know will break the second I turn the corner.

          Side note: I find it hilarious how quickly the street vendors switch their merchandise 

to what  will sell the fastest. In the summer, March and April, it was sunglasses. By 

the end of April into May it was scarves. Next it was hats and gloves for winter, and 

then this week everything switched to umbrellas and windbreakers.

Anyway, back to the rain. I went straight back upstairs and changed into my wellies and rain jacket. The rain continued the entire day and night into Tuesday, when it continued all day and night into Wednesday morning! Oy vey. I was not looking forward to this at all. I love to walk here and had planned to walk all day Monday- plans cancelled. Then Tuesday, the only way to get from one afternoon class to the next is to walk 45 minutes along a (not a highway, it's not that dangerous) very busy large road. Great.
     For some reason, I find that rain abroad (aka not America) is so much more unbearable than at home. In Spain, I walked to class one day in the rain, with a rain jacket and an umbrella and was so completely soaked from the hips down that I had trouble sitting down (wet jeans are the WORST). I can't figure out what it is that makes it so much harder to live your life when it's raining here. The most I've got is that we drive so much in America that we don't really deal with it, but then I throw that theory out because I had plenty of rainy walks up to the bus when I was student teaching in Manhattan and they were still not as bad as what I experienced abroad. Jess thinks it's the quality of the roads, which is also definitely possible. 
     I walked home Monday in spite of the rain because I was so mad and wet anyway. It was eventful to say the least. People are IDIOTS when it comes to walking around in the rain. I didn't see a single person with any kind of rain boots, though they all have umbrellas that they hit you in the head or eye or face with as they leap to avoid a puddle. There was foot traffic build up in crossing the streets because people would get to the other side of the crosswalk, only to be confronted by a huge puddle before they could get to the curb, so then a line would form to follow a path around it. This is nice and polite, but also we are in a road and cars will be moving soon, into us, so please get out of the way! Speaking of cars moving, I actually got hit by one on my way home :S Yikes! I was crossing a one-way side street that opened onto the main road, which was completely clogged up with rush hour, bumper to bumper traffic, at a complete standstill. Now, I was crossing at the crosswalk, and of the two lanes, the left already had a car stopped waiting for me and three other people to cross. He would've had to wait anyway though, because there was a solid wall of cars in front of him in the main road he wanted to merge into. However, just because all of these factors point to the idea of stopping at this crosswalk, does not mean that everyone would actually do that. Many times down here people will pull through as close as they can to the new road and leave most of their car sticking into the crosswalk- a personal pet peeve of mine. This special brand of idiot in the right lane last Tuesday, decided he didn't care about stopping in crosswalks, about not having a road to drive into because of the wall of traffic, or even about the people who may be in the road. As a result, he drove right past that first car I mentioned- the one stopped in the left lane- and into me. I yelled and slammed a fist into the hood of his car and miraculously he stopped in time. He only bumped me and I stumbled a few feet out of the crosswalk, but I was nonetheless unnerved. What if I hadn't had time to yell or he hadn't heard me or I didn't hit his car or he couldn't stop in the rain?? It was intense and I walked away fine but with my adrenaline pumping. What a moron. There were so many signs to stop, not the least of which was the car right next to him, NOT moving forward. It was insane! This is part of the reason why I hate driving, and why I think no one should be able to drive above 40, ever. Why on earth would you need to be going 49 in the rain, on a side street, when there's traffic, and human beings in the road?!?!?!? Ugh. Anyway, long story short, I was fine, just shaken up and seriously angry.
     Tuesday proved to not be much brighter. Here are a series of pictures I took on my 45 minute walk from one class to the next. They don't quite capture just HOW wet and nasty it was out (or how miserable I was). Apparently, my rain jacket is not even remotely waterproof, and my rain boots, while they didn't leak, can't prevent the waves of water splashing in over the top of them. I was so thoroughly soaked by the time I got to my second class, there was a puddle underneath my chair by the end, from me dripping dry onto the floor. I could pour a stream of water out of my boots by the end of the night, and walking was a weird sensation because I constantly felt like I was going to fall thanks to the several inches of water sloshing around inside my boots.