The Comfort of Rain.

There is nothing I love more than a completely rainy day. However melancholy and dark that sounds, it's true. I crave them and look forward to them. Some mornings I wake up thinking before I look out the window, "please, please, please be raining today." I've always loved rain as its followed me though the different stages of my life. Playing as a little girl in my best friend's back yard on her swing set in our bathing suits as it poured. The rainy spring days when I was in high school and couldn't wait to get out so I go take blog pictures amongst the puddles. The time I came back from college my freshman year and was kind of heart broken about a guy and sat out in the driveway of my house at midnight as the pouring rain comforted me. Sitting in my dorm last year on days with my roommate as she made french press coffee and I took long, satisfying naps in my damp clothes. 

This is my first 'big' rain here in Italy, the kind I love. It's sprinkled one or twice here, but not an absolute pouring out of the sky rain like today. It was wonderful, just what I needed. Even though the thunder storms kept me up last night (I've NEVER been woken by a storm, but these Italian storms are something else), I was still satisfied to wake up this morning to puddles. I didn't bring an umbrella on purpose to walk to class, but just walked looking up and all around at how the city changes when it rains and how the people change, too. To me, the city of Florence becomes ten times more romantic, more beautiful then ever when it rains. I wish it would rain every day.

It was just so comforting to me. I never, ever thought I'd say this, but I miss Ohio's weather. You all hear me complain about the snow and rain and wind and cold temperatures...but it's all I've ever known. And when I came to Italy, I've been kind of shocked how it's always sunny, all the time. Always hot, all the time. Not that I don't love a good sunny day, but I found myself wishing and wondering if my faithful cloudy, rainy "Ohio Day" was ever going to come along over here. Thankfully, it did. 

I got to walk in the rain and come back to my apartment soaked but happy. I fixed myself a cup of coffee and took it to my bedroom and sipped it from my bed as I watched and listened to the rushing rain outside my open window. I got to take a peaceful nap with the sounds of nature steadily pattering, and woke up to a freshness of fog and coolness that the rain brings afterward.

Already looking forward to the next one.

With much love, Lauren.