I love a rainy night

There is something about a good rain storm that makes me nostalgic for the few months I spent in Ireland when I was 20. When the hills around Gilroy and Hollister start to turn green in winter, and there is a fog in the morning, this area looks surprisingly like parts of Ireland.

I studied abroad in Northern Ireland in Coleraine at the University of Ulster for three months one fall. While it might seem like it's been raining forever as the storm continues into its 16th hour here in the Bay Area, it rained every day I was on the emerald isle. I went nearly 90 days without a sunny day.

In Ireland, no one uses umbrellas or raincoats. The rain is heavy and wind so strong that these barriers to the weather offered little protection. For most of the time I was in Ireland, my outergear consisted of a pea coat and a variety of sock caps, especially after I did the unthinkable and shaved my head.

My memories of Ireland are scented with damp wool and stale cigarette smoke, and the smell of whiskey on a cute boy's breath. Most of my weeknights were spent at the student union pub with the quick friends I made. We'd shrug off our jackets and huddle together in a booth, and my friends would drink Guiness while I sipped cider or Bailey's Irish Cream or vodka and orange juice. After I gave up drinking toward the end of my adventure (because I had a crush on the only boy in Ireland who didn't drink or smoke), the bartender took to calling me O.J. for the orange juice I ordered all night long.

I had a love-hate relationship with the rain in Ireland, and there were times were I missed the sun as much as I missed my family and friends. But sometimes it felt like the weather was something that drew my new found friends closer to me, as we huddled together in the booths at a restaurant or a pub and drank to warm ourselves up, or the night my crush took my hand as we walked home from a party because as he said, it was cold out.

There was something exhilarating about heading out in the rain for class or to the grocery store or just for a night out with friends without worrying about how wet my clothes would end up or what my hair would look like without an umbrella - certainly not an issue after I cut most of it off. It was a time when I felt braver, and freer, and more innocent than I do now.

Now that I am older and less spontaneous, I worry about the flooded streets I will encounter on the way to work, about my heels becoming slippery in a puddle, and about the electricity going out on my busiest day at work. So I'm glad I'm in California, where I know the storm will pass, to be followed by plenty of sunshine.

In Bray, Ireland, circa fall 1998, with my pea coat and my minolta 35 mm slr.