So How Hot Is It There?

Happy Summer! Yep that is right, here just a bit south of the equator we are in our hottest time of the year. So all you people talking on Facebook etc about enjoying your favorite autumn foods, stop it! You are making me miss the change of the seasons :) No, really it is just weird to feel it getting hotter, when I keep expecting it to be getting cooler. Partly because when I was in Indonesia before, things would be getting cooler at the hospital by now, as they are just a bit north of the equator. So there the hottest part of the year is over and the rains are coming almost daily now.  

On the map above, the hospital is just a bit north of the city of Pontianak (which is on the island almost right in the center of the map), which is located directly on the equator. Right now during language school though, I am living just south of the city of Semarang (look directly down from Pontianak), so we are south of the equator. 

Here is our forecast for Saturday (I started to write this blog post on Saturday but didn't get it finished) to give you an idea of what our weather is like right now. Pay attention to that "feels like" area which is a combination of the temperature and humidity, sometimes called heat index. Saturday afternoon for example it will feel like 100 degrees F. Our low at night is feeling like the mid-70s. 

The other interesting thing about living near the equator is that the sun rises and sets at about the same time each day throughout the year. So right now the sun is coming up around 5:30 am and going down around 5:30 pm. There is a little variation on that during the year but it is pretty much always 12 hours apart. So when those winter blues hit in late winter, come for a visit - our weather will be nice and with a daily rain to cool us off by then, it is always green!