So. This is rain.

Today it rained. Although to be more precise, I suppose it merely drizzled for a while and got everything slightly wettish. We had to go out for a walk this afternoon and I excitedly told Rachel that it was raining while we hauled her stroller down the stairs. She has no memories of rain. I got her all buckled in and headed out into the street.

“So,” she said looking only mildly impressed while assessing the dripping sky and her newly dampened surroundings, “This is rain.”

About ten minutes later she looked up at me, wrinkled her nose, and said, “Actually, Momma, it’s kind of weird.”

“What’s weird?”

“The rain.”

“Yeah, it kind of is, isn’t it?”

The sky was completely overcast, which isn’t necessarily uncommon here, but the clouds were unusually heavy and bursting full of, quite obviously, rain.

“Why are they doing that?” she wanted to know.

It rained enough to get the ground wet, make puddles in the pot holes, and leave little splashes of muddy water on the car windows. (This particular car only has three wheels—there is a stack of bricks where the left-hand front tire should be. I fail to see how that is useful, but whatever).

By the time the rain falls through the polluted sky and rolls off the dusty leaves onto anything below tree-level it is more dirt than water, but I guess it’s wet, anyway.

Since the traffic was a lot lighter than usual, due to the rain, we made excellent time on our way to tutoring so dawdled by the Cairo American College for a little while. We looked at the rain drops collecting on the nasturtium out in front.

“This is our school, Mom,” she told me, “And when I am five, I will go to school here.”

“When you’re five you will go to school, but probably not here.”

“But this is our school!”

CAC is where most of the kids from church go to school and we’ve gone a few times for choir concerts, community events, or classroom shows. Rachel thinks school is awesome. (Ask her about that again in 10 years and see what she says).

We continued on our way and I let her out to play on a little strip of grass not too far from where we tutor. Usually the grass is burdened by dogs running and dog-owners smoking and loitering, but today, because of the rain, it was empty so I let Rachel out to run about and chase hoopoes, who seemed to be the only other creatures brave enough to venture out in the acid rain. There weren’t even any Egyptian grandmothers out to throw me bad-mom looks for letting my two-year-old run around in the rain with her hood down and wearing sandals instead of shoes or for exposing Miriam to the outside world at all, let alone the rain.

It was kind of fun to get a little bit wet—we haven’t seen that much rain in about a year and a half!