In the 30's

So I hear the weather has been a bit on the extreme side lately up there in the Northern Hemisphere.  Temperatures in the low 30's right?  Us too!  Celsius of course. My goodness it has been boiling over here the last few weeks!

You know when your day lilies start looking a little burnt, it's hot outside.

The canna lilies were doing great in the hot and dry.  The color of this canna represents how hot it blazed last week pretty well.  It felt like the sun was a heat lamp at the beauty salon when you walked outside.

Any outside conversation happened in the shadiest spot possible.

All of our classrooms had their air conditioning running wide open.

And finally, finally after much prayer, sweat and bottled water, it rained.  Glorious, wonderful, insistent rain. 

 

It is so beautiful now.  Everything is refreshed.  My students told me today they were glad it didn't feel like we were being boiled to soup in my music class.  They are not the only ones.

Good Morning

I have prayed for a long time to become a morning person.  One of those weird people who could pop out of bed and not feel like I had been run over by a train or that half of my face was still lying on my pillow.  Mostly I wanted to be a morning person so that I could spend time in God's Word before my day got really started, and I could actually understand what I was reading.  Otherwise, it felt like I was missing part of my brain.

These past few days, I've woken early, sometimes earlier than my alarm clock, and actually felt happy about it.  That's never happened before.  I actually was happy to get out of bed!  Maybe I'm getting sick. 

Besides devotion time, and breakfast time, and general get ready time this morning, I was also gifted with this:

It was a good morning.

The Weather Man

As you hopefully know, the equator runs through Kenya and Nairobi is just south of it.  One of my former students did ask me when I announced I was moving from South Carolina to Kenya if I was "going to save the polar bears." So I just thought I would make sure we were all on the same page about the equator up front.

Anyway, living this close to the middle line of latitude means several things regarding the weather.  Instead of having four distinct seasons, we have four periods of weather.  The hottest part supposedly is Dec and Jan and it's dry until the long rains start in April.  We head into a dry "winter" in July and August (40's-80's) and it gets warmer until we get the short rains in October to cool things off a bit.  So on and so forth.

Here's the issue: it's been rather warm the last several days and bright and sunny.  By rather warm I mean, why don't we have air conditioning?  Anyway, Richard has been taking a poll to anticipate the weather around Christmas.

Person 1: Is this as hot as it gets?
A: Oh, yes.  It definitely does not get any hotter than it is now.

Person 2: Is this as hot as it gets?
A: Oh, no way.  December is way hotter than this.

Person 3: Is December the hottest time of the year, hotter than now?
A: Yes, it's the hottest time and it's not that bad, about like now.  October, now, is way hotter.

I believe Richard's comment was, "It's easier to skewer a wild boar with a wet noodle than nail down the weather around here!"

So...the jury is still out on the weather.  I'll try to remember to post in December and let you know how it stacks up.