Dear Friends and Family,

It has not rained since November. Daegu landscapes are brown in uniform, with smatters of pine needle greens. Shriveled leaves gather at tree trunks between gritty gusts of wind. Winters in Korea parch and crack open the land. Day by January day, as we wound our way up Mt. Palgongsan, we noticed that the mountains became deeply and deeper entrenched into mist until one day their edges disappeared altogether and the only vistas left to admire were distant shadows.

No doubt you all will think me a lunatic to say it: but I miss rain. I miss the rhythm of rain against pavement, the splatter of rain against windows. I miss tipping my head back to meet drops face-on. I miss air laden with water before the start of rain drops. I miss hair-curling humidity. I miss the challenge of preparing my dress - just in case it rains. I miss the variety in rain: sprinkles, rain showers, deluges. I miss the smell of just before, and just after a good rain. I miss rain sweeping air pollution to the ground, sweeping pollution into the gutters. I miss the dust-dampening relief that rain affords. I miss rain so badly that sometimes I imagine myself in a mad dash away from the city, stopping only when I am knee-deep into the sea.

Last Saturday morning, silent shadows on my window scurried me from bed to coat to outside, where the shadows were actually snowflakes. Enough snow flurried in Daegu to return some relief to the edges of the mountains. But sadly, there wasn’t enough to relieve me. --Laura

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“Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth;
without rain, there would be no life.”
- John Updike