Attack of the Chamsin

Hebrew has a special word, חמסין (Chamsin).
It describes the exact kind of heat wave we've been having here in Jerusalem. Before you say something like, come on Brian. You're in the desert in the summer. This is quite possibly one of the worst heat waves I have ever dealt with in the last three days. This comes on the heals of me telling Kaitlin on Skype that I was cilly walking home at night and it was in the low 70s.

To be fair, I haven't checked an official weather forecast in the last few days to see just how bad it has been getting, but the reports that I've been hearing from students that have checked are that we're getting near or over 100 fahrenheit. Back in Minnesota it gets that hot in the summer, but there is literally no relief the last few days from the heat AND we've been getting humidity too. There is no chance it will be raining any time soon to break the heat. There are basically no clouds to grant some shade and the heat is just oppressive.

Making matters worse, my walk to school is up hill both ways. No I'm not making that up. We're up hill on Derech Aza all the way to Karen HaYesod and from there it is downhill to David HaMelech. This means that on the way home, it is uphill up Lincoln (pronounced lin-ko-Lin, yes you say the second "L" in Hebrew) and Eliot to get back to Karen HaYesod. What I'm getting at here is that I've consumed almost a gallon of water as well as other liquids and I still feel dehydrated. It got to the point today that I took a very very long nap today and I'm not really a napper.

In the end, this heat wave will break and there's only one to two months left of this oppressive summer heat. Not that I'm complaining too much, because I wouldn't trade this experience for anything. I guess this is just a welcome to Israel, surprise for us.