Raincouver

I have lived in Vancouver all my life, but I had never heard of Raincouver until I started teaching ESL. My students claim that the word Raincouver is famous all over the world. Usually when they tell me this, I look at them suspiciously. “I’ve never heard of that before,” I say. Then, they just stare at me like I’m the weird one.

The rain affects my students quite a bit. Once, a conversation with one student started like this: “So Masa, how’s it going?” The student then looked out the window and said: “Um, not good.” Of course, he was looking at the dark, grey clouds looming over the mountains. (I guessed that the weather was supposed to indicate his mood.) When he planned his trip to come to Raincouver, he said he knew all about our weather. He had heard from his friends and friends of friends how wet it can get. But, it still took him by surprise. “We’ve only had two days of sunshine since I arrived!” he cried.

I optimistically remind my students that Vancouver is in the middle of a rain forest. I show them Kitsilano beach where a special poem is written on a rock about the rain in Vancouver. I teach them different words and expressions for rain in the English language. And on especially dark and dreary days, I even bring in cookies and funny songs to listen to like Garbage’s “I’m only happy when it rains!” No matter what I do, they rarely seem impressed. Then again, I can’t blame them - this city has the most rain they’ve ever seen fall in one month.

But, Vancouverites know it’s NOT the end of the world. The truth is once you’ve lived here for while, you get used to it. It’s not that bad, really it’s not. Summer is on it’s way.