hail storm adventure!

Well it's my last week living in Pitesti and it's sending me out with a bang. It's been mostly rainy and sometimes stormy the last few weeks here, one or two big thunderstorms in the afternoon. But they've been short-lived and nice to watch and anyway I'm from North Carolina so it doesn't bother me to get caught in one, so when I left for the grocery store (a fifteen minute walk, ten if I'm hurrying) and it was getting dark and windy, I just grabbed a raincoat without thinking much of it.

Made it to the store and halfway back before anything happened. The wind had gotten cold and it some random fat cold drops were falling when just like that, the whole sky fell. Pouring really cold rain, and then the hail started. Small at first, then quarter-sized. I don't know why I didn't stop. Some construction workers even yelled for me to come join their little huddle, but I elected to press on, taking off my glasses so they didn't get cracked or anything. And mind you, I can't see anything anyway because I've got to keep my head bent down and face covered, meanwhile giant hail is bouncing off my head and the front of my legs and those suckers sting.

Not to mention just how cold the rain was. By the time I could see my apartment my jeans were falling off me from being so soaked and my legs felt frozen, kind of how your skin feels when you've been playing in the snow and you're wet and it's twenty degrees outside. So I didn't realize until a few minutes after I'd changed out of them that the stinging wasn't just my skin thawing but little welts on my legs. They're going away pretty quickly though.

And then! I'm trying to get everything soaked off me and out of my purse and hung up in the balcony and realize my glasses are gone. Think I must have taken them out of the bag and set them down somewhere because I'd shoved them in without the case. Well I search the whole apartment and they're nowhere to be found. Half an hour later I'm searching the stairwell thinking either they didn't go into the bag when I tried to stick them in and that's why the construction workers were yelling or maybe they fell out when I took my keys out. A neighbor sees me searching, asks me if I wear glasses, I almost fall onto him I'm so relieved. He's found them and given them to my neighbor. Amazing.

One more fun thing about this story: my hair looks super nice after it's been rained on--gets curly in a way it won't do any other time. So I'm fleasca in this picture but soon I'll have cute hair... :)