I know it’s not that cold. It’s only in the forties. But the buildings here are not insulated, my heater is useless and my classroom windows are wide open open all day. It’s gonna be like this all winter, and one of my goals this year is to learn to deal with the cold without bitching all the time. But after two years in one of the hotter parts of Africa, it’s a tough transition. So I’m gonna bitch about it once, here.
School is getting tough. It is colder in my classroom than it is outside. I wear my long undies, sweaters, a 3/4 length coat, down vest, a couple pairs of socks, Ugg-style boots, etc. all day in the classroom. Lately I’ve had to add gloves to the mix- but I need to find white ones because it looks pretty dorky when they get all chalky. Today during break I ran up and down the stairs just to generate some body heat. And the poor students are just as miserable. We all just huddle around our hot bottles of tea, our breathe steaming out as we try to do lessons. I skipped my office hours today because I really couldn’t picture two hours of just sitting there in that cold.
Home sucks. I live in an old-school concrete commie housing block. I can see my breathe all day long even when my heater is on. I’ve got a huge array of electric devices to keep me warm, but they are all mind-boggling dangerous (ever have a plug-in hot water bottle? Well, they explode sometimes). I’ve moved all of my furniture into the one tiny room with the heater. But it’s still freaking cold. Since there is no insulation at all it is like running a heater outside. I can’t get anything done anymore because it is too miserable to leave the blankets. The worst is going to the bathroom at night. My bathroom is basically outside, and it’s five minutes of pure freezing hell.
Speaking of bathrooms, my hygiene sucks these days. Bathing is like the low-light of the week. My poor gas-fire water heater barely functions and once I get wet I have no way of every getting warm again. I can’t even find a full-sized towel in this country so I can barely even get dry. Hell, even getting the motivation to change my clothes is tough. I’m ashamed to admit that there have been a few days in a row where my long undies have basically stayed on day and night. Even then it’s a trial to lift up my shirt and put my (freezing cold) bra on in the morning. Not that it matters much anyway. My clothes won’t dry inside or outside, so I smell like mildew all the time anyway.
Once I get outside it is not so bad, except that my town in general can be pretty gross. We have literally had maybe five days with blue skies since I came here in September. Other than that it is a gray haze. Today it was so hazy that you couldn’t even see buildings a half block away. And it’s not fog. It’s like this day and night. Just eternal greyness. For months without break. The words "soul destroying darkness’ come to mind.
Two more months of this. I’m still getting used to things here and I’ve already found a lot of things about my town that I love, but these winters are going to be a trial for me. Well, toughest job you’ll ever love and all that. Luckily in a few weeks I’ll have some time in sunny Yunnan province, so I can get a break then.