It's Refreshing. It's a Restart.

The Cape Town climate has interesting effects here. Most days are wrapped in weather that seems straight from the front of a postcard sent home to a jealous audience, and you wake up each morning to a stunningly beautiful day. The sunshine meets the mountains, and the constant breeze delivers a breath of fresh air to those resting under the rays in the beach.

It sounds quite ridiculous to admit, but such incredible weather can be exhausting. Rather than being filled with energy and a list of things you’d like to be doing just because the sun is dancing on your shoulders, you’re given just another day in Cape Town. The heat swarms your house, bedroom, and classroom, and you persevere until relief comes with the night, as air conditioning is a luxury not provided to most buildings.

When you wake up to cloudy with rain for a change, it seems as though your parched soul has been given the biggest drink of ice-cold water. For me, in the land of open windows, waking up to natural air conditioning being escorted through my window is invigorating. It’s refreshing. It’s a restart. And today is one of those days.

Perched in my window at The Power & The Glory, I am relieved by the rain. I have always been a fan of the occasional rainy day, but suddenly the things I took for granted in moderate Kentucky, which enjoys such days quite often, seem brilliant. All of a sudden, tires spraying onto the car behind, windshield wipers, water dripping into a puddle, and rain-soaked hair seem worth writing about.

In Cape Town, rainy days readily reveal themselves: umbrellas rather than beach bags, rain jackets rather than tank tops. For once, there’s no pressure to soak up the sun or conquer the day. Instead, the pace slows even more than usual, and I am content wasting my day in a usually packed coffee shop window that perfectly frames the poetic scene in front of me. I would usually stand no chance in acquiring this spot, but today the Capetonians have settled further inside, safe from the occasional raindrop gone awry. I’ll take it.