Sun, Rain, Clouds, and Showers

At this point in my experience living abroad, I thought I should give the Irish weather its due explanation. In fact everyone here tends to revere the different kinds of weather rather like the pantheon of gods of the ancients, and when the sun breaks free of the heavy clouds here, you really do come to feel like the sun god has arrived and is shining down on Ireland!

THE SUN IS OUT EVERYONE QUICK GO OUTSIDE

I'm typing this now from my apartment's balcony. This is the first occasion I've even been able to use it, and I sprang out here as soon as I woke up and felt the sun streaming in through my window. You see, sunshine is precious here. One learns to appreciate sunshine in a whole new way--it becomes a lovely treat and marks certain days as special. This is because most of the time the weather here is a capricious, fickle friend: A local saying claims that "You can experience all four seasons in a single day in Ireland." And that's no overstatement! In the course of a single day, the weather can change from cloudy, to pouring for 3 minutes tops, to glaringly beautiful sunshine, to 40 mph winds, and then return to cloudy and raining. The only thing that actually doesn't ever seem to change is the temperature, which typically varies only about 5 degrees throughout the day (due to being a coastal town). It constantly hangs around 40 degrees like a sulking child, refusing to dry off and get warm.

A much more accurate depiction of the weather, at the Inch Strand.

As such, the outfits day to day must follow a strict standard. I call it "Be prepared for everything." This involves closed-toe shoes, long pants, a sweater, and a raincoat. You might have expected me to say rainboots or at least water-proof shoes, but the Irish have an extraordinary knack for pretending it's not raining (while complaining about it all along). They wear normal, non-waterproof clothes and wouldn't do any even if a hurricane was barreling straight through Galway. I find this amusing because NOTHING, and I mean nothing, ever dries here. The ground, the patio furniture, my towels, the streets, my clothes, my hair--everything is damp, all the time. I've heard that in March and April, the rain begins to let up, and things start to get a little warmer. Who knows? For now, I don't mind the weather, and it's only looking up from here.