Greetings fellow REU students!

Monday evening I received a text from Teri asking me if I wanted to go with her to a Hmong market in St. Paul, which she had already been to in the weekend. It was almost 5 pm, and I said, “Sure! as long as we are back by 7:30 pm.”, to which she replied: “I’m sure we’ll be back by then”.

When we left the dorms, we got slightly lost getting to the light rail, as we were trying to use a shortcut. It also had started to drizzle slightly, but we though it wouldn’t rain much.

Half an hour later, we get to our stop in St. Paul, and the rain has started to intensify. We asked each other if we wanted to go back, but not wanting to seem weak or unadventurous to one another, we decided to run in the rain to the market. After walking/sprinting for less than one block, we were soaking wet. The rain came down much more heavily, and combined with the wind, it looked like we were in the middle of a storm. After finding shelter in a small supermarket for about 10 min. we decided to run to the nearest Chinese restaurant we could find.

As we partially dried, while eating and drinking tea, we saw reports on the TV about extreme flooding in Minnesota. By the time we finished eating, it was a beautiful cloudless and sunny day.

We proceded to find the market, which turned out to be closing. After walking through the few stalls left, we decided: “We’re here, why not visit the cathedral?!”.

Which tuned out to be closed too.

We ended up returning to the dorms at 9:30 am, two hours later than planned, but I am glad to have shared this small St. Paul adventure with Teri.

Large rabbit sculpture we found walking through St. Paul.

The calm after the storm in St. Paul.