Blog #67: Thunderstorms

Last night I was laying in bed, sweating the normal amount one sweats in bed in their non-AC apartment in India, and I was thinking about how much I miss a good Kansas thunderstorm.

The smell in the air, the flashes of lightning and cracks of thunder, watching and hearing and feeling the rain pour down over everything. There's just something special about a summer storm that I've been missing in the incessant heat here.

Today, as I was on my way to volunteer with Sarah and Mary Alice, I shared this thought with them. I'd love nothing more than a thunderstorm. They agreed, and the topic was finished with.

After spending a couple hours with the kiddos in the after school program, we began our ten-minute walk to the main road to try to catch an auto. Then it started raining. Hard.

I'm carrying my ukulele and my backpack and I don't have an umbrella or any means of shielding myself from the rain, but I'm loving it. It was the first time I'd really been in a rainstorm here, and right after I had mentioned I was wanting one!

By the time we reached the main road, Sarah and Mary Alice and I were sopping wet. I'm sure we left puddles behind in the auto. Still, we were laughing and smiling and soaking up all the rain we could, literally.

When I reached my apartment, the power was out, and I told the boys I was going up to the rooftop to dance in the rain. They joined me, and I'm sure we were quite the scene- just a couple of shirtless Europeans and an already soaking wet American jumping around their rooftop in the middle of a thunderstorm. From Bharatnatyam to intense clapping and everything in between (in all honesty I can't explain the dancing of Oskar and Giacomo, it is an experience that must be witnessed with one's own eyes), there was little rhyme or reason to what we were doing. We were just moving and splashing in the rain, as I think one should when they're in the middle of a thunderstorm.