The Rain

We were told that its been unseasonably rainy since we’ve been here. More like weather for the rainy season. I was glad to hear it doesn’t get any worse. It rained really hard all night Friday night and was still raining the next morning. With a tin roof, it made it hard for poor Nathan to sleep upstairs. When we woke up on Saturday morning the pool was overflowing. We had a small river running through our front yard. Andy and Nathan thought it’d be fun to swim in the overflowing swimming pool and the pouring rain. It reminded me of 7th grade science class when you learn about water displacement: watching the already overflowing pool create huge waves of water and run off into the lawn as Andy and Nathan did cannon balls into it. They stayed out in the rain and played for a good hour and half. It’s a warm rain so it wasn’t like they got cold. So much water was running out of the gutters that Andy decided to take a shower in one of them. We have a lot of pictures and videos of all of this. Once the rain had finally stopped around noon we decided to venture into town with David’s car and get some grocery shopping done. Well even several hours after the rain had stopped a lot of the streets downtown were flooded and a lot of the stores had to be sandbagged. There were fire men standing in the flooded streets directing traffic. We parked about a block from the produce market and got out and walked through the muddy water to the market. I had to roll up my jean capris as I waded through it so they didn’t get wet. I heard some Samoan girl say to her friend something about the Palangi’s and then “Welcome to Samoa.” This was my first time to the market though and we were able to get lots of stuff.
On our trek back to the car we had to wade through the same street with water in it. As I was walking Andy told me to watch out because the sidewalk dropped down, well just then I took a step down into a hole and sunk down into water up to my thigh. I had to put my hands out in front of me to catch my fall and got my rain jacket all wet too. I got a nasty bruise on my ankle and knee too. Of course a bus full of Samoans drove by just then too and everyone on the bus was laughing at me. I had one dry leg and one wet one for the next little while as we made our way around to different stores. Little kids would follow me and point and laugh.
Generally it rains at least once a day, usually more. Its tough to plan walks when the rain clouds come in so fast. The other day I wanted to go for a walk with Tyler. The next sequence of events happened over the span of about 30 seconds. I suddenly realized it wasn’t as hot anymore. I looked up and saw that rain clouds had come in, I turned the stroller around to head home, I heard it in the trees first, like a big wind gust was coming, and then the rushing. It poured, so hard and so fast, like the hardest rain you’ve ever seen in Utah. I just started running back for the house. Within about a minute I was completely soaked. I tried to put the cover over Tyler, but he still managed to be soaked too. About the time I arrived back at our driveway, of course the rain had stopped. I still decided to call it quits and put some dry clothes on. This has happened to me several times. That day was probably the hardest it rained on me though. Tyler doesn’t seem to mind the rain. Even when it poured that day he didn’t want to go back and didn’t make a peep when he was getting soaked. When we’re inside and it starts to rain hard he runs to the window on the sliding glass door and yells “REEN!” (his version of rain) and puts his nose against the glass to watch it come down.