Jack be nimbus

As we filed out of the office to head home for the day, I looked up and saw a sky threatening rain. With the exception of two or three afternoon sun-showers back in March, I hadn't really seen it rain in Addis Ababa while I've been here. However, there was no mistaking that the nimbus clouds above weren't going anywhere. At 7pm, when my colleagues and I usually meet to go out to dinner, it was a night sky, cool air but no rain.
We walked about ten minutes to Botan-En (Peony Garden), a Chinese restaurant located on Bole Road between the airport and our guesthouse. After a failed attempt to get the large table in the upstairs dining area (there were only three of us), we headed back to the first floor and were seated at an equally large round-table, but in a private room... Well, private except for the fact that the framed glass door contained no glass so that there was simply a door frame with a door handle which the waitresses stepped straight through to serve our food. After finishing a simple meal of fried rice, pot stickers, mabo tofu, hot & sour soup and a couple Castel, I glanced through our door frame and out the restaurant's front window; I could see cars had their windshield wipers waving back-and-forth.
We decided to wait out the rain at La Parisianne, the café/patisserie across the street. Although they had officially closed 15 minutes earlier, at 9pm, they were still serving fresh juice to non-umbrella holders. I had tried the coffee at La Parisianne before, but next time I will definitely order the half-and-half juice again: freshly-squeezed orange juice topped by a layer of strawberry smoothie in a glass mug, replete with bendy straw, for only 12 birr (about $1). Twenty minutes later it was still raining, so we covered our heads and waved down a taxi in the rain, slightly damp but free of incident.