Surprising rain

It started like another ordinary rainy Wednesday in the cold Olsztyn. Or maybe the universe is preparing some little surprise for today? Just wait and see!

After some funny conversations with my friends from different corners of this round and still flat world, I left work. I made some shopping, and I left for the AIESEC office, to chat with my parents on GT. It rained on me. Calm cold raindrops. It was not warm, as Romanian summer rains are but it didn’t bother me.

I didn’t want for my hair to get all wet again, as it got almost dry again while staying inside the office, so I put my large pink scarf on my head (the picture is on the way!). Until Kortowo station and while I had been waiting for the bus, everybody looked at my head and my tattooed hand. I think I could even sell tickets like in the circus. I didn’t feel bad. Up until now, people were looking curiously at me just after I started speaking Romanian with my friends. Now, the simple fact that I had something unusual for them on my head and a henna tattoo (made by a girl from the United Arab Emirates’ delegation in Global Village), made me to be considered the strange stranger. Maybe it would have been the same if I were black or Chinese or just by being me but in another part of the world. So, it was one of the first steps in preparing for my truly different traineeship.

While waiting for my second bus for 7 minutes under the gray sky, with no shelter nearby, the rain started to drop even faster... millions of huge raindrops made the street look like a continuous river, with a lot of clear bubbles. It was just me in the rain. Singing the songs played by my MP3 player, feeling the raindrops on my back skin and arms (even if I was wearing a pullover and a jacket), thinking about how little we are... human beings with no control and still so much will. I remembered the title on the poster in my room at home and in the office of AIESEC in Bucharest – “We all have the same sky. Do we all have the same horizon?”

I was feeling happy – just me and the universe. Started asking myself what do I really want? What do I really need? Who do I really love? Am I really leaving in a soap bubble or is it just the reality that my soul can perceive?

The bus arrived and took me at the last stop: Brzeziny – my 3 months home. Walking on the way from the bus stop to the sweet pink house, I sang a song I love nowadays; I danced in the rain, in my all-wet shoes. The trees were there for me, dancing by their leaves and branches. I thought that trees could feel the rain maybe deeper than we do. They find in the rainwater all their life and essence and they love the sun as much as I do as well. It was just then when I understood how could Maytrei fall in love with her tree. I felt a bit sorry that I didn’t have somebody to kiss in the beautiful rain, under the dancing trees. But I can’t have them all, right?

I got home and the entire spell faded away. But yet another special thing was to be discovered.

I undressed my wet clothes and put them to dry. Then I went to the bathroom and when I stepped down the little single stair towards the bathroom door, my foot got wet again. What’s happening, I said. Turning on the light and opening the door I could see an enormous green lake coming from the shower tub to my feet. Because of the rain or I don’t know why, the water came inside, through the sink in the shower tub. Green dirty water, stinking like hell. I called the owner to tell her. She informed her husband and they waited for somebody from the sanitary service to come and fix the problem. In the meantime the polish girls arrived home so I went to warn them about the stinky out of order bathroom. They saw on the hole way a frog and started screaming: “Żaba! Żaba!” (frog in Polish). None of us wanted to kiss the huge frog and make it become a prince since we don’t believe in fairy tales anymore, so the frog jumped in the green lake from the bathroom and left us. We couldn't use the bathroom last night.

In the morning, it was all-ok, like nothing had ever happened. The sun was shooing the gray clouds to show its smiley blue sky.

I have to tell you, my friends, it was the most extraordinary rainy day ever! Don’t hesitate to try for your own when you’ll get the chance!