Here comes the rain again

The rainy season has really hit with a vengeance now! It usually just rains for an hour or so in the afternoon, but yesterday it started at lunchtime and continued on and off right into the night. And when it rains it’s really torrential, and so noisy against all the tin roofed houses.

The ‘Green’ season
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I’m sitting on the balcony as I write. Because we’re in the Central Valley we have the mountains on both sides, and I can see them both now completely covered in clouds. This season is referred to in most of the guide books as the rainy season, and by locals as invierno (winter). The government is trying to reclassify it as the Green Season, which is regarded as more tourist friendly. It’s still t-shirt temperature, but you definitely need an umbrella. I usually check the mountains before setting out, because rain always comes from one or other mountain, and then I know whether to bring an umbrella or not.

Pressure cookers!
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When we met Fionn, he was just back from Cuba. Fidel Castro gives a television broadcast to the nation on a Thursday night. While Fionn was there the broadcast took for 4 hours, and it was entirely about pressure cookers. Fidel was giving a speech to the parliament, and he explained how he was importing hundreds of thousands of pressure cookers from China, to help save energy. One is to go to every household in the country. While he was making his speech, he was calculating the savings that would be possible, using a calculator as he did the permutations. He stumbled through a few calculations and made some mistakes, and was corrected as he went by members of the assembly calling out the correct answers as they shadowed the sums. ‘No Fidel, I don’t think that’s correct, you divided instead of multiplying’!

We’d love to visit Cuba while we’re here, but we’ll wait until our Spanish is good enough to follow the Thursday night speech ourselves.

Socialising
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I went out with the teachers from the school on Thursday night. There are no classes on Friday, so Thursday is the big night out. No matter how you get on with people in work, it’s only when you go out on the rip with them that you really get to know them, and I’m happy that they’re a really nice bunch. I’m getting more hours this week, and two teachers are leaving at the end of the month, so I should be full time by then. I’m also told I can start the Spanish classes, so I just have to arrange that with the Director of the Spanish department. After that classes should be for four hours per day five days a week, so I’m hoping I’ll make quick progress.

Useful technology – Part I
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I really have to sing the praises of having the broadband internet connection. When you’re living so far from home it really helps you stay in contact. Quite apart from email (which you can do from cafés anyway) we can now watch the RTÉ 9 o’clock TV news every day. I was also able to get the BBC coverage of the Westminster election in its entirety, with Peter Snow and the swingometer and everything! We can get RTÉ and BBC radio live and also get archived shows. It’s tremendous.It’s now just 5.30. It’s still bright but very cloudy. I can hear the distant rumble of thunder, and see lightning over the mountains to the north. But for the moment the rain has stopped. It will be dark shortly after six. There isn’t much of a difference in the length of daylight between seasons. It’s fairly much 12 hours light, 12 hours darkness, all year round. One thing I definitely miss as you all head into the summer is the long summer nights.

Looking forward to the week ahead, have a good one.

Hasta la proxima semana.