2 posts tagged “winter”

The South Island was struck by another polar air mass overnight.  Last time we had hail and frost; this time we woke up to snow.

Dunedin shut down for the day.  All the roads out of the city were closed all day.  School was cancelled, businesses opened with minimal staff, and anyone living in the hill suburbs was advised not to drive.  People who tried to take their cars out this morning played bumper cars with other drivers or skittered down icy hills into poles or parked cars or banks.  A jack-knifed truck blocked the motorway, trapping many vehicles including the snow plow and grit truck (and there may only be one of each here - snow all over the city is not a frequent occurrence).

We stayed safely at home in front of the fire, watching the snow falling outside.

Our only outing was to take Petra out onto the street to give her her first snow experience.  She was intrigued, but didn't feel like getting down to play in it, preferring to look from Travis's arms.

I haven't seen snow for years so I enjoyed crunching around and scooping up snowballs.

Six months into my stint in Central America and I'm still trying to get my head around the fact that I live in the tropics now.  San Jose really appeals to me - it's warm and welcoming, and full of lively, social people.  Just leaving the house leads to adventures, even when I'm only going to the supermarket.  Going into central San Jose is an exotic, chaotic treat.  And an evening out has all kinds of possibilities - you just never know what you might bump into.  We live in a big bright apartment with a maid who comes in twice a week to make it all tidy for us.  We've visited volcanoes and driven to the beach and the jungle.  And last weekend, we stayed on a Caribbean island, complete with white sand beaches and palm trees.  As Travis said tonight, "It doesn't suck!" 

It surely doesn't.

The cold and damp of a Vancouver winter seem to belong on another planet.  Now I only read about the persistent rain, the mid-afternoon twilight, the heavy grey clouds massed just above the buildings.  (And this year, about snow and windstorms, power cuts, and water advisories.)  They don't exist for me in real life.
 

The change is so total as to be surreal.

The Talking Heads song - Once in a Lifetime - sums it up pretty nicely.  "How did I get here?"