Nothing extreme, but I am unable to find true warmth. Actually, my bed is pretty warm, but it's that camping type warmth, where my ears and nose are always a bit cool, and I'm asleep most of the time, so I mostly miss out on my warmest hours. It's not that my house and the buildings I go into are not heated, it's just that they are heated economically. In the house I will live in for another 3 weeks for example, the only warm rooms are the living room and the kitchen. The whole open part of the house (bottom hallway, stairway, and upper hallway) is about 50F . My room, the living room and the kitchen are 60F. I'm not sure about the other bedrooms. Then I realize that my family is really used to these temperatures, because when we visited a friend's apartment, which was normal room temperature 67F, my host mom and dad were sweating. My host mom thinks it's because I'm so skinny, but host dad is also just as skinny. He thinks it's because I don't often drink tea. I think I ruined a lot of small blood vessels in my skiing days, before I knew the wisdom of thin socks, during the days when I would ski non-stop, eating lunch on the chairlift, not willing to miss a single second of downhill speed. I remember many days with numb toes and fingers, and then painful thaws on the drive down the mountain, itching, burning, but it was worth it at the time. Now I am wishing I had always worn mittens instead of gloves, taken a break if my feet were cold, and realized the importance of proper circulation.
Outside it's been -10C, not extreme, although the wind finds the zipper on my coat, and I regret wearing my cheep polyester hat rather than my polar tech one on the walk back from Ukrainian tutoring. This walk includes a suspended cable pedestrian bridge which actually sways in the wind. I wonder if it's ever inspected as a contemplate whether it would be better to land on solid ice, or to break through into the water so that the impact would be softer. How do you climb out of a hole in the ice? Could my two keys be used like an ice pick so I would have some hand hold while I kick with my feet? How many attempts would I have? 30 seconds, 40? Nathaniel, I need to borrow that survival manual you have. I just keep telling myself that a cold winter will make hot, muggy days of summer more bearable. The joys of a continental climate. It's also helpful to think of Nathaniel, up in Alaska. I love sunshine.
As soon as I started walking around downtown, my feet were roasting, sweating even, but back in the car, they were freezing, the drying sweat not helping. The highlight of this L'viv trip was seeing the big Christmas tree, and all the beautiful buildings in the center in glorious clear winter sunshine. For all my whining about the cold, I definitely prefer cold clear days to semi-tepid cloudy ones. The universities were heroic, the firefighting academy is an old castle, the 21 st century signs touting mobile phones and Italian clothing only take up the ground floor along the narrow curvy streets. Second floor and up (first, if you count European style, ground, 1, 2…)I saw beautiful balconies, gargoyles, and a bunch of other cool things I would be able to describe if I knew anything about architecture.
