Weather Report

     It's wet here. The ground is wet, the trees are wet, the walls are wet, the air is wet, and I am wet. It's the rainy season and the rain has been coming for the last 10 days or so. And it's not letting up yet. Today was a little reprieve and the ownerless cats (a mother and four 3-month-old kittens) came out to sun themselves on the roof in front of our apartment; they looked so content as they worked on their tans. But tonight another load of rain is coming and they will be forced back into whatever sanctuary they came out of.
     The Han River is up too. Korea is a bumpy country so the rain that falls flows down the hills and into the streams that become rivers and the newly formed rivers around Seoul dump into the Han and the Han fills and turns a muddy brown as it flows west. This morning as I biked over the river I thought it looked a lot like chocolate milk.
     Two miles east and I came upon sticks and empty bottles and leaves and mud on the bike trail, a sign that overnight the river had come up to the trail (it normally flows about 2-3 meters below the trail). It had receded by the time I got there, but not by much and I wondered if the rains started again while I was at work would it come back up and force me to find an alternate route home. It didn't, but now I wonder about tomorrow's rides to and from work; of course, if it's pouring I'll take the bus--something I'd rather not do as I prefer to fight the elements than the other commuters, but there is a line and if the elements cross it, I'll suck it up and deal with the people.
     I've not seen rain like this in quite a while. I do remember about 4-5 years ago in California a February-March season in which San Jose got something like 45 days of rain out of the 60 or so, but California is dry otherwise, so the rain would fall and the ground would get wet but in the minutes/hours between rainfalls, things would dry out. Here there is no such drying period. Things get wet and stay wet. I like to take two showers a day during this time of year and my towel struggles to dry in between. I've taken to setting up a fan and keeping it on so that our towels and laundry dry in a decent amount of time; and even then it's still a struggle. Humidity is the enemy during the summer and especially during the rainy season.
     But Korea is certainly a land of changing weather. So it's moments like this that I like to think back to how cold I was a few months ago and how much I longed for the season when I could wear shorts and t-shirts and enjoy a good sweat. Soon those months will be back, so for now, I'll take this.