Should have packed my water wings

It rains a lot in Vancouver. Its kind of one of the things we are known for. So when my host family told me that it would be their rainy season while I am here I was fairly certain that their idea of rain in the Mediterranean would not even come close to what I consider a rainy day. Unfortunately it appears that might have been a little presumptuous on my part.

The first couple of days here were absolutely magnificent. Hot and sunny and b-e-a-utiful.

Exhibit A: Pictures of sunny Baillagues and Montpellier. Isn't it pretty and warm looking. and PALM TREES. Enough said :D :D :D

But then one day last week Laurence (the mother of my host family) took me into town to get my student ID and transit pass all set up. God bless her... I just followed her around and handed things to people when prompted, ID, Passport, Money, Pictures etc and voila 2 hours later I had a bus pass, a train pass, a library pass (for all the french books I plan to read ;p) and my student ID for my school. We ended our errands in the central city mall, known as the Polygon, whose parking lot I think is awesome. All Pink!

When we looked outside we saw that the gloomy, dark clouds of a few hours earlier were now a full on downpour. And YES I actually mean a DOWNPOUR. Easily as hard if not harder than I have ever seen in Vancouver, not that I admitted it, we do have a reputation to uphold. Il pleut comme ca I kept saying, aka it rains like this. People were making mad dashes across the 30 feet of uncovered area to get into the mall and in that short distance were getting absolutely soaked!!! We sat down for lunch to wait it out and I learned how to say both wet (mouille) and soaked (trempe) in French and that apparently the area is subject to flooding so they have some sort of alert system to warn people. As if prompted, she got a notification on her phone that it was now an "Alert Orange"aka take care when driving because roads could flood. After awhile we couldn't avoid the rain anymore and so in making the 5 minute walk to our next destination we too got tres trempe. I don't think I have ever gotten so wet in the rain in my life. My jeans were plastered to my legs and my sweater was about 10 pounds heavier and this was with an umbrella. The streets were flooded with about a foot of water and within seconds my feet were absolutely filled with water. All around you could literally see the streets and street level stores filling with water. Small rivers and then entire lakes were beginning to form and rush down the stairs into the tram tracks.

This continued as we drove home and we had to take several detours to avoid streets that were submerged in water. We luckily made it home just before the Alert Orange became an Alert Rouge and all the streets were closed. Herve, the father of my host family ended up stuck at work and Chloe was stuck at school as the streets were no longer driveable. All transportation was shut down and over 1800 people were stranded at the train station.  But at least they had a sense of humor about the flooding on social media

The rain stopped around 7:00 p.m in the evening after raining for a solid 6 hours. It took another 2 hours before the Alert Rouge was called off and people could begin driving again.Even so some places were too dangerous too drive and some kids had to actually sleep over at the school. Due to liability concerns schools in France will not release kids when the roads are not safe. The next day school was cancelled for kids until the roads completely dried up. The day after that the only evidence of the whole affair was a couple overflowing ditches and a whole lot more mosquitos floating around looking for Candian meat. I was able to ask if this was the norm en francais (go me) and apparently while they do have frequent orange alerts during this season. they rarely get to Red alerts. This was the worst flooding they have had in 11 years since a similar occurrence in 2003. It rained over 200mm in 2 hours (and no I didnt actually understand this fact through conversation - yay for pictures on the news). I of course steadfastly maintained that Vancouver is comme ca, comme ca, and I do think on some days it rains almost as hard..We definitely have waaaaaayyyyyy better drainage though. I guess their propensity for floods and city wide shut downs evens out the fact that they don't ever get snow days. I am just thankful that the rest of the days have been beautiful and sunny. Although as I write this at 10:00 at night I hear something on the window that sounds suspiciously like raindrops but I am sure that is just my imagination. Maybe I better pack a personal flotation device for tomorrow just in case.