Where Did the Sun Go?

The older I've gotten, the more I've realized just how essential to me the
sun is! Maybe it's because I'm a "California girl" who grew up just miles
away from the ocean and spent a lot of time at the beach, or even better, at
the lake, waterskiing. Being outsdie and feeling the hot sun on my skin is
one of my favorite things.

But living here in Hamelengan is like what I imagine living in Seattle to be
like. Grey. Wet. Squishy. Some rain is nice. But there can be too much.
Way too much! Our little valley has steep, sometimes straight-up mountain
walls on three sides. Follow the valley down about 10 miles and you hit the
ocean. We're not meterologists here, but our theory is that all that ocean
moisture makes its way up our valley and then hits the mountain wall at the
end of the valley, about a mile or two from our village. With nowhere else
to go, it just dumps on us. Matt has a rain gauge here, and he says that
we've had at least some rain on 40 of the 43 days we've been here! Oh my.

And now, I'm starting to feel the effects of it. I can totally tell when I
haven't had enough sun. I get grouchy far more easily. I start getting
down more. I have little to no motivation to get things done. And I just
start craving hot, sunny days.

This past week we actually had 2 days in a row of almost no rain! Wow!
Unfortunately, those same two days we practically were living in a cloud for
the entire day. So even though it didn't rain much, it was still grey and
gloomy and hard to get the computers charged. But the no-rain didn't stick
around for long, and now we're back to wet and mud.

I keep hoping for a couple days in a row of good hot sun, blue skies and no
rain. I want to take the kids out for some hikes (to burn up their energy
and mine) and just get out of the house for a while, but it takes a little
while for the paths in the jungle shade to dry up. A couple hours of sun
just doesn't do it. And hiking with 5 kids when the path literally is a mud
pit just isn't too much fun.

Today marks our "2 more weeks to go" point. It's been consistently wet and
grey for the past 6 weeks, but since this IS supposed to be the beginning of
the dry season now, I'm hoping that maybe, just maybe we'll get a little
more sun in the next 2 weeks and be able to get out of the house a bit more.