Nope.

Earlier this week I was thinking, I like Chicago! I'm a city girl...I could probably live here (in the city, not out where I'm staying!) and love it. Seems like a cool city. Today, I made my decision. Nope.

Woke up to cloudy weather. By the time we got on the road at 8am it was beautiful and sunny. Got hotter and hotter and by noon it was scorching (although not by Athens standards). It stayed really hot and I nearly passed out in a non-air conditioned room full of 30 people around 3pm. :) Around 3:30 we headed outside and noticed dark clouds in the distance. We ducked into a grocery store downtown and while inside, the skies opened up. Downpour. Sideways rain. Thunder and lightning.

It was still hot, and the humidity increased like 600% in 20 minutes. Outside, the clouds were dark and angry, with strange formations and an eerie green hue. Tornado clouds, someone said. I have never seen a sky like that before!

We looked down the street and actually saw the wind coming. We were being pelted with torrential rain and saw this wall of stuff, stuff from trees and dirt and whatever, coming our direction. We were not outside for very long! Even after ducking immediately in a door, we were picking things out of our hair and wiping ourselves down.

We waited it out in the ministry building we had been visiting during the day, and finally had to venture home. On the way there were trees down everywhere, traffic lights out, and we passed through a spot that looked like had a "microburst" - a new word for me that I don't mind if I never encounter again! They told us on the first day at the ITeams center where to go in case of a storm, down at the bottom of the stairwells underground...I'm hoping we don't have to do that anytime soon!

By the time we got back to Elgin, the sky was clear and the sun was setting.

The weather here is madness. Unpredictable. Different every day. Different several times a day. Live in the midwest?

Nope.