Meteorology

Every Monday, a teacher from the village school in Monticello picks me up and drives me up the hill for the afternoon classes. We usually manage to talk about the weather for ten whole minutes, thanks to the innately interesting nature of Corsican weather and the natural weather-chat gifts of English people. She always says that she couldn’t stand to live in Paris, with the low grey sky for months on end. Here, with the mountains so close to the sea, it is always changing. After a whole day of rain yesterday, the sky began to clear and the view down to the sea was so beautiful that I got distracted from teaching and just stared at it. Against the charcoal of the storm clouds, the sun lit up the new white clouds in pink and gold. The sea was deep indigo, striped with silver below the patches of clear sky. Later on I walked home, and the neon lights of the shops matched the pastel pink, baby blue sunset.