Floored

I've peeled myself up from the tile floor to tell you that today was a hot day. I think it was about 115 degrees, or so. What makes it more hot is the strong, sandy wind. It is strange to get used to wind being hot.

And so, we came home and stripped down to lie on the cool-ish tile floor. I mentioned earlier that we do have air conditioning. Yes, we have the capability. But, unfortunately something about the electric cable not being strong enough means that sometimes there isn't enough juice to go around the building. So at night our lights flicker and go dim, and the microwave doesn't produce heat...and the AC doesn't produce much cold. Not all the time, but usually when we're all trying to use energy - either when it's pretty hot or pretty cold and we turn on the ACs/heaters. Good thing that no one else will be living in our building during the really hot summer months (we're staying longer to teach summer school while everyone else is going on vacation).

Sand is the other part of the equation. As I taught my evening class I watched the wind whip up a massive cloud of sand so that I couldn't see out of my thirdfloor window. It's the North African version of fog. I was praying that we hadn't left our windows opened! The students were asking for the English word for sandy wind - and we don't have one of our own! As Artic-dwellers have multpiple names for snow, they have a more advanced sand vocabulary here.

The BBC describes the situation this way: We are "affected from March to June by very hot, dusty winds from the desert which bring very high temperatures, often exceeding 50°C/122°F for a day or two."

Let's hope it is a only a day or two - and that it doesn't mark the beginning of the real summer heat.

Either way, I think we'll be spending a lot more time on our tile floors.