Water

All the rain that did not fall in the past few months is pouring out of the sky right now. I woke up this morning hearing the wind howl between the flat buildings and hearing the noise of what seemed to be a gigantic shower. I closed my eyes tightly hoping that the sound would just be some white noise from a vanishing dream, but no... water continued to pour down as I got up.

The wind is so strong that taking an umbrella is absolutely useless. Guillermo just explained to me that in Valencia, it doesn't rain vertically, but horizontally. So I set off to campus trying to protect myself - in vain - from the liters of water flying around with nothing but a light raincoat on.

It didn't work. I got to the exam completely soaked, down to my underwear. Trying to explain the exceptional treatment of agriculture in pre-Uruguay Round GATT trade in wet tweed pants is less than ideal. I was happy to get out of there as soon as possible!

The soil seems to have lost its capacity to absorb all the water, because the rain just stays on the streets and pavements. No matter where you walk, when you get out onto the streets you're walking through almost half a centimeter of water, trying to make its way to the lowest point.

Meanwhile, I just saw on tv that it is snowing all over Spain! There are 5cm of snow at a mere 30km of Valencia! Seems this whole spring thing was just another quirk of nature...

The rain wouldn't bother me so much had I not decided that this afternoon would be off-time and had I not made plans to go walk in the centre, to go to the cinema,... with this rain, I'm not going anywhere. Sigh.