So just the other night my husband and I decided to go on a date night, something we try to do once a week, and the night we chose to go on our date night decided to develop a thunderstorm. The rain at first was more like a light drizzle and we enjoyed the lightening show that surprisingly came along with it (not usual in this part of the country so we get excited when it thunders and lightening). We also thought, since the restaurant we were headed to was not too far away and the rain was not too heavy, that we would take my e-bike together and go. We put in the trunk of the e-bike a rain pancho made for one person, just in case it might start raining harder, and took an umbrella as well. My husband would drive us both and I would hold the umbrella over our heads to keep the light rain off of us. Sounds like a pretty good idea, right? Well.. the wind started to pick up stronger, making it quite difficult for me to actually hold onto the umbrella (a pretty big umbrella too), and all at the same time my husband is yelling at me to keep the umbrella over his head. I wanted to yell back that I was unable to because of the wind but I couldn’t stop laughing at my predicament. We soon stopped, as I am still laughing, to put into affect our plan B, the pancho. However, before we could pull the pancho out, there was a local lady trying to pull over a taxi and standing in the rain. I felt really bad for her and then saw that after she was able to stop a taxi she ran back to the covering that we were standing under and started to grab a stroller we hadn’t seen and head back out into the rain with shopping bags and two kids in all. I ran to help her with the covering of my umbrella while she pushed the stroller in one hand and pulled along a toddler in the other. We got to the taxi and I followed her around with my umbrella as she put her kids in the car and then the stroller in the trunk. This is an unusual sight in this country, one they usually have only one child, and two, strollers are not so common. After they took off in the dry taxi, my husband and I continued with our plan B. We decided it would be best for him to wear the pancho and me to continue to hold the umbrella, but this time only being responsible to hold it over my own head. As we headed off it started to work, but then the wind picked up stronger, or my husband started to drive faster and I ended up once again laughing and screaming as my umbrella almost pulled me off the back of the bike. Well, my husband figured out what was going on and stopped for us to move onto plan C. Plan C is common in this country, not unusual at all, but something very different for us. But we had no choice and plan C was our only option. If you live here or have visited here you guessed it, plan C was for us both to share the pancho and lose the umbrella all together. So there I was hiding in the back of my husbands pancho, holding onto our umbrella that was closed up now and not being able to see a thing. My husband mentions something that he thinks they make ponchos for two people now. And for some reason I thought our entire situation was just hilarious! I laughed all the way to our destination and continued to laugh as he parked the bike and uncovered his somewhat wet wife, drenched only in some areas from previous failed plans, with her hair all a mess and mascara smeared from uncontrollable laughter and rain. We walk into the restaurant, a hopping place for other foreigners, and all seemed confused as to why we were such a mess. The rain after all was not that heavy, but looking at my soaked shoes and our lower pant legs wet from the splashes on our e-bike along with wet hair we looked like we had stepped out into a monsoon. Man was I looking good for this date night! Ha! What an adventure…
