Weather Report

Toxic Rainbow
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl

The guy who works the early morning shift at the hostel is from Uruguay. We usually exchange greetings in a kind of Portuñol whenever I'm passing through and either picking up or handing him my room key.

"Everything good?" I'll ask in Portuguese.

"Everything's good," he'll respond in Spanish.

I always enjoy talking with him because I know that if I unintentionally throw some Spanish words into the mix he'll still understand what I'm trying to say.
The other day it was overcast when I was leaving. I was carrying my laptop in my bag and didn't want it to get wet. So I asked him, "Do you know if it's supposed to rain?"

"Hmmm," he said, "The answer is always here in this newspaper. Let's take a look."

He flipped through the paper, glanced at a map of Brazil dotted with suns and clouds over different cities.

"Nope," he said, "It's definitely not going to rain today."

"Good" I said, "Because I'm carrying enough stuff as it is. But you know how it goes, if I don't bring my umbrella it will rain. If I do, it won't."

"Funny how they call umbrella guarda-chuvas in Portuguese, isn't it?" he said, "I mean 'hold-water'? Hopefully, it doesn't do that!"

I went to the computer lab at the university and typed away at something until lunchtime. Then I looked out the window and saw that the streets were wet.

It was raining.

I started laughing. The hostel was in the opposite direction of where I was going, but still it was worth it to go back and grab my umbrella.

As I neared the hostel, I saw the Uruguayan walking down the street heading in my direction. When he saw me he pretended to hide from me, to pull his shirt up over his face.

"I wanted to avoid you," he said, "You probably want to kill me don't you!...Luckily, you're not that wet yet."

"Just watch," I replied, "Now that I'm going to get the umbrella, it's going to stop raining."

And of course I was right. It stopped raining 10 minutes later.

Now every morning when I greet the Uruguayan we have a good conversation about the weather. "You better bring your umbrella, just in case" he warns, "I don't want it to be my fault if it rains on you."