Weathering the winter

The rumors are true - even though it's summer in the real world (i.e., the Northern Hemisphere), it's winter down here. However, you'd barely know it - the average temperature seems to be something like 15 - 20 degrees Celsius (~ 60 - 70 degrees Fahrenheit). Now, I don't know where you come from, but in my book, that's nice spring weather. Some days it's a little chilly, but only because everyone wears short sleeves and maybe thin jackets. And people are carrying on like a new ice age is coming. It definitely gives a sense of... I don't know, power, or invulnerability or something to get to say, "When I was in Montreal, winters NEVER got above -15 C (~ 0 F) and we were HAPPY to have it that warm! Why, I had to walk back and forth to school in 3 - 4 feet of snow, uphill both ways!" My God, I'm gonna love being a grumpy old man...

The other thing is the rain. From the way people talked, I expected it to be a constant downpour throughout the winter. But there are at least as many gorgeous days as rainy days. And when the rain DOES come, it barely lasts five minutes! Actually, that's really weird - having a huge downpour, and it's LITERALLY gone in less than five minutes most of the time.

I have to say, the mildness of the winter here has got me a little worried about the heat of the summer. If you know me, you know that I don't enjoy the heat, and especially not humidity. Almost all accounts, however, assure me that it is a very dry summer here, though it can get quite hot. One guy (Bob) so far, has contradicted that, and said that it is really humid here in the summer. However, he's from Kenya, and I'm going to have to assume that where he's from, it's outrageously dry (I did a really quick Wiki search on Kenya, but could not get immediate confirmation of my assumption, as Kenya seems to have widely varying climate).