Thunderstorms

The area we are in gets some amazing thunderstorms. They mostly come at night and we have been woken up several times in them middle of the night by the sound of driving rain on the windows at the roof and by loud thunder claps that sound like they are right above us. The storm that hit last night also came with wind that sounded like it was going to tear some trees down with it. When we came out of the house this morning the only thing knocked over was a potted tree in the courtyard, though.

It had been a beautiful, warm day yesterday all day. I had even been practicing my German phrase for "the weather is nice today" in case I ran into the little old man that I have been seeing on my walks to the store. He doesn't speak any English (although one of his grandsons does, and he corralled him one day so that the grandson could tell me that the weather was nice), but he keeps trying to talk to me. So, I have been trying to memorize some phrases so we can say a couple of things to each other. I haven't seen him for the past couple of days, but hopefully I will see him soon so I can use one of my phrases. Yesterday, my phrase was "Heute ist das Wetter schön" since it was so nice and warm. But the flies were even worse than usual around our house. When we were having dinner with Mary last night we were talking about how bad the flies were swarming around and she said that she thought there was a thunderstorm coming since they usually get worse right before a thunderstorm. And she was right, even though the weather station hadn't said anything about rain or a storm.

Although not a picture of a thunderstorm (we don't have any since we have mostly been sleeping when they start), here is a picture of Darren standing out in the rain during one of the rainstorms that have hit while we have been here.