WINTER has come

(Also known as Cydil's annual chilly January post)

I know there are certain places in the world described as paradise --places where the temperatures vary little year round, where there is no humidity, and the rains come at predictable intervals.

Personally, that sounds boring to me.  I love the seasons.  I love those days in spring where the green is so vibrant it's almost fluorescent.  I love the days in summer when the day light hours extend into the evening hours and it just feels like you have extra time to enjoy the outdoors and be with friends.  I love the days in the fall where the foliage changes into vibrant colors and the air turns cooler.  And I love winter for the time to snuggle indoors, enjoy holidays and traditions like Christmas and feel like it's acceptable to be the homebody I naturally am because after dark, almost everyone is indoors!

Living in Albania we still get to enjoy all the seasons, albeit a bit differently than where I've lived in Illinois and Kentucky.

The greens are still quite vibrant in the spring time.  The summers are the same 'hot and humid', though we lack the comfort of air conditioning to the same degree.  And in the fall, we don't have all the beautiful vibrant colors, but Albania still has the crisp, cool days and autumn rains... But winter.  Winter thankfully is not as long as in America but it sure seems more intense.

The view Friday morning from our dining room window.  The snow lasted three days on most rooves.

I get it.  It's cold in the Midwest.  But I'd trade your 1 degree Fahrenheit in Indianapolis for 24 degrees in the village any day.

I think when they build houses in this part of the world, they looked at a calendar and thought, "It's hot way more days than it's cold.  Let's build these structures to stay cool in the summer."

In case you're wondering, it only snows here about once a decade...

So they put in high ceilings, concrete or tile floors, and built with the most economical and available materials -- which until recently did not include insulation or thermal pane windows. They run their plumbing on the outside of buildings to make repairs easier and store water in tanks because 24/7 water does not exist here yet. You put in windows and doors to allow for cross breezes and prevent the growth of mold.  There is no such thing as central heat or air so no fussing with ductwork or sealing up the structure to keep that 'bought air' contained inside.

Now imagine living in such a place when the temps fall into the 40s and 50s.  Brrr!  But that's okay -- you have a wood stove for cooking and which you feed with sticks (because there are no more big healthy trees to cut for logs).  It'll take the chill out of the air. But then the temps fall even lower.  It gets to freezing.  Now it's REALLY cold.  Let's keep that coat on inside because it's not that much warmer inside than out.  If you are still not picturing it, imagine if you had to move into your garage in November or early December.  And you didn't have electricity for periods of time, or running water.

This week it's well below freezing, and not warming above the freezing point for several consecutive days.  Thankfully, the cold here generally is only really rough for about two weeks.  But oh those two weeks.  They test your character.  They test your strength to bite your tongue and keep those complaints in check. (I think I'm failing now).  You spend hours you didn't plan on pouring precious drinking water water over pipes, blowing things with hairdryers or portable heaters -- ANYTHING -- to get enough water to fill the toilet tank, much less wash hands or dishes.

We are learning to cope with it better.  We have a wardrobe that keeps us comfortable in spite of variations of temperature we experience throughout the day.  We make our beds with the thickest of flannels and puffiest of down comforters and heaviest of wool blankets. We adjust our expectations about how much electricity we will have (though that seems to be poor, regardless of the time of year). We realize that we might just smell like a bonfire on days when it's windy and the smoke blows back into our living room.  We gird ourselves up each morning before we roll out of bed and try to jump into our clothes as quickly as possible. And we make sure each afternoon our bottles of water are topped off so we have water in the morning for hands and dishes.

This boy has spent five of his eight winters in Albania.  He has virtually no memory of snow.  I can't blame him for wanting to make a snow angel. :-)

Oh how lucky we are to live in 21st century.  It has made us soft.  I'm a spoiled American, used to being able to slip out of bed in the winter in bare feet onto carpeted floors, to run around the house in a t-shirt and yoga pants year-round.  I don't know how people did it years ago. Or how folks even do it here -- in our village or up in the mountains where the snow is a meter deep.  They certainly didn't sit on their computer and blog about the weather.  They just got to the business of living.

Alright.  Time to layer up!  I smell the fire!