Oxen gone, and dysentery can't be far behind

I realize that humming "rain, rain, go away" around town may be an insensitive thing to do in one of the most water-starved nations in the world, but yesterday it was perfectly appropriate. Today was nice in comparison - cloudy, damp, chilly, and puddly. It was raining constantly from last Thursday until last night.

Thursday: the beginning of dreary weather made for a lazy night.

Friday: rain crushed some potential camping plans.

Saturday: I felt inspired to not leave the house all day.

Sunday: was such a wet and watery adventure that I just had to write about it.

It was raining when I woke up Sunday morning, which might explain a large part of the trouble I had waking up. In fact, it was raining hard enough that Farah canceled our peer tutoring session. When Rasha and I left the house, it was cloudy, but dry... for a while. And by "a while," I mean "under half a minute." Then the hail started. Oh, yes. Hail. The drive to the university was clogged, maybe a little bit more than usual, but it was rush hour. Rain, hail, okay. After parking, Rasha went to class and I went to TAGKS. This entails walking a little ways down the side of the university, going down some stairs into a pedestrian tunnel underpass, going up the stairs on the other side, walking past the University Bookstore, Star Donuts, and Lebnani Snack, which have roofs over their sidewalks, and past Burger King, McDonald's, The Pizza Place, and Things & Wings, which don't. Into Khalifeh Plaza, to the back of the building, and up the stairs to the fourth floor. Everything outside was soppy and gross, with fairly constant rain. 9:30 AM.

Cut to 12:30 PM. New scene. Down the stairs - the first floor was growing a puddle that was spilling into the staircase - to the ground floor, with its lake. Apparently the windows in that part of the building aren't watertight. I walked out to the sidewalk and found... well, let's just say that if I were playing Oregon Trail, I would have lost all my oxen fording that river. And the next river. And the one after that. Strangely both a blessing and a curse, the sidewalks in Jordan are all about a foot and a half tall. (Why, you ask? To keep the cars from parking on the sidewalks, of course.) That meant that the sidewalks stayed fairly river-free during the storms, with only an inch or two of water. But the high curbs also make for deeper rivers in the streets.

You know those bits the Weather Channel does on the dangers of driving in a flood? Videos of vehicles in a foot of water being swept away by its power? Well, yes. That's what Queen Rania Street looked like yesterday. The Jordanian stormwater drainage system is just like Jordanian copyright laws - that is to say, nonexistent. Seriously. Somebody had the foresight to put drains at the bottoms of tunneled underpasses, but that's about it. There are no sewer grates cut into the curbs. There are no sprawling grassy areas to soak up the rainwater. All we have are concrete-banked channels with asphalt bottom. And when the rain comes (oh, did it come), the streets turn to rivers.

I have to admit that I laughed to myself a little when my host mom expressed apprehensions about my going out in the rain on Friday. "What? Rain? Pshaw." But then I found out why she was afraid. Because rain is one thing, and lakes are another. Nothing is boring here in Jordan - not even water falling from the sky.