"Weather..."

Sometimes I found myself sitting back and reminiscing about one surprising event that occurred on May 28^th of last year. It was Thursday and I was just getting home after school. I was really bored and I didn’t have anything good to do, my sisters were watching such a lame movie that I truly dislike and my brother was next door at my cousins house.  It was getting late and I still hadn’t done any homework yet, so the feeling of guilt was getting on me already every time my mom asked “Is your homework done, sweetie?” and I replied “Of course!” each time. It is always like that, my mom can see right through me so she sent my right away to my room so that I could finish my homework, or maybe  I should say start my homework.

I went for my laptop and sat on my bed, I had to finish my homework before dinner.  Immediately after I opened my laptop I realized I was on Facebook chatting with my friends, looking some pictures and well, almost anything but my homework.  I heard rain pouring outside, it was pretty normal so I ignored it as usual. My mom, who was downstairs, shouted “Ceci! The dog outside and it is raining!”. “Yeah, I know… so what?” I thought, but I knew she was indirectly asking me, as she always does, to let the dog indoors so it would not get wet.  I went downstairs, and opened the door. I called out for my dog and it came in a little bit faster than usual. I bent to pet it and I felt something weird on its hair. “Mom, I think the dog has been digging a hole again” I said, “Oh, really? Why do you say so,?” she replied. “Well, the dog is all covered with black dirt”.

After that I rushed to my room, and opened my laptop again. I pressed F5 and Facebook’s page was refreshed. At first glance it was surprising to see how many people had updated their status in the last minutes, so I read one to see what it was all about. “Esta lloviendo arena!!” it said. What?! I could not believe what I was reading.  “Maybe he is just crazy” I thought, but the moment I read the other status they were all the same. “Mom!” I shouted, “I know why the dog is dirty, it is raining sand!”. “Sweetie, you have gone mad” she said, I ran downstairs and managed to convince her to go outside with me so that she could see what I was talking about.  In our way to the door my sisters tagged along.

“Thank God! Yes, yes!” my sister exclaimed, “For sure we are not going to school tomorrow”. I couldn’t believe what my eyes were watching; the ground that once was filled with green grass and really tiny pinkish flowers was now black. I couldn’t find a reasonable way to explain what was happening so pretty much all I was doing was staring at what was happening. After fifteen minutes of staring astonished at the black sky, I found myself fooling with the sand outside the house with my sisters, brother and cousins. Of course I repented the next day when I had to wash my hair and it was full of tiny little grains of sand.

Of course my sister was right; we did not have school the next day.  Next morning I rushed to my garden to see everything, and I have to admit that I was even more surprised to see it that moment. I thought that something like this did not happened that often and that it was just something so, in it’s on way, unexpectedly beautiful and random. But when the newspaper came around six ‘o’clock in the morning I was even more amazed. To see the pictures of how all the city was covered with black sand, which I discovered from reading the newspaper that it came from the Pacaya volcano, was just really out of the ordinary.  Everyone all around the country was talking about it, and I still could not believe the extraordinary event that occurred just last night.