Swimming home from school

.....and the rain, rain, rain came down, down, down....

We have been experiencing huge amounts of rain over the past few days. It's hard to express the fact that it's so nice to be somewhere where even the rain is so meaningful. You don't look out the window, swear and curse because it's raining. You look out the window and say - this is great, the crops will grow, the Kinneret will go up, the wells will fill and we don't have to water the grass.
I took an umbrella and went to pick up Oriya. I thought that I would be efficient and pick up something at the hardware store first. It's only a couple of blocks past the school.
It was raining when I left the house, not too badly. By the time I realized that the hardware store did not have the mousetraps that I want, the rain was coming down so hard that I couldn't cross any street. The road were rivers. There is no place for the water to run, the sewers did not take the volume of water. By the time I walked the few blocks back to the school to get Oriya, my shoes were soaked. We tried to wait out the rain a bit - but no luck.
Finally, Oriya and I decides to bite the bullet and start our trek home. The vast amounts of water pouring down the street were unbelievable. We had to decide that we were going swimming. At that point, we just sunk into the streams pouring down the streets and hurried home. Obviously, as we were turning onto the block leading to our house, the sun broke out and the rains stopped.
By the time Kobi walked home from school - 30 minutes later, he didn't even need an umbrella and couldn't understand how we got so wet!