I live in Malta most of the year, but sometimes I feel like I live in my own world. I never read/listen to the news, I work from home, and go out with the kids when everyone else is working. I honestly have no idea what's going on most of the time. Yesterday however EVERYONE was stuck at home because of the insane weather that we had. So you bet all the Maltese took to facebook to give their wise insight about the storm. If you don't know this, in Malta we never get snow so everyone went crazy when on Saturday afternoon....a hailstorm made our streets and cars white!!! As a population, we have a sense of competition ingrained in us, we are a very small island and dare I say, insignificant...so everyone wants to say something about seeing the worst hit corner of the island... I had personally heard the warnings about the storm coming...so I wanted to make sure that I had all the errands and fun things done by Saturday afternoon so that I could lock myself in and hibernate until it was all over. The kids and I really wanted to visit the Malta Artisan Market event at Torri Mamo, which is a tower built in the time of the Knights of St. John. It is quite close to our house but I had never take the kids to see it and I love connecting with local makers at these events. After that, we visited my moms for a bit...and just as I was packing up our stuff getting ready to go home, the weather started to take a turn for the worst, so we braved it, got everyone in the car and drove home to THIS!!! The kids were super excited of course!!! While this mama prayed in silence to get home safely.
That evening the winds started to pick up and howling...Force 11 winds!! I have never seen such strong winds in my life and it lasted for about 12 hours non stop. In our house no one could really sleep at night because it was so noisy. Malta woke up to a devastating disaster.
While I cuddled up under my blanket on the sofa, lots was going on outside. In the northern part of the island, fish were being brought ashore by the waves and of course some guys just grabbed their plastic bags and ran to collected these poor fish.
Later on in the day, cows escaped a farm and were running in one of our major roads. And the funniest part of all this craziness, is the name that people on facebook decided to call the "hurricane". Hurricane Dnegel and somehow everyone was on board with this name. As I previously mentioned I have no idea what's going on here most of the time. So my first thought was "What the heck is Dnegel?" I had to go on google and figure this out...apparently it was something funny and I didn't know why. Basically, every year a report is released about the most common names given to babies in Malta the previous year. This report was released a few day ago but here is the twist. Someone screenshot a conversation between two moms in the comments, where one mom said she wanted to call her baby Dnegel, and other mom asked what it meant, and wait for it...."This lady said it was Legend backwards" so of course...Hurricane Dnegel was the unofficial name of the hurricane.
My 4 tips for being stuck in a Maltese storm (aside from the obvious - stay inside one)
- Throw away your umbrella - we do not have that nice sweet soft rain in Malta...it's all or nothing here, accompanied by crazy winds
- Keep a pair of knee-high Wellington boots - our roads FLOOD!
- Park your cars away from trees and poles
- Don't wear thick jackets, they will have you in sweats in seconds, thin rain jackets are ideal
- Bonus Tip: Throw away your umbrella, it will be destroyed by wind EVERY TIME
Now, I know this is not the kind of blog posts I usually write. Not much value in here but honestly, this is just to funny not to write about...it will serve as a reminder why my people crack me up. VIVA MALTA