I'm just gonna do this once- it's cold.

The BBQ Pit
1

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.

2

Yeah, it went from being 50 last night to 7 this morning. Ugh.

3

Wish you were back in Camaroon? :slight_smile:

You’re getting to travel and see places that most people will never see. Yeah, it sucks to be cold, but I’m sure you’re still enjoying the experiences you’re getting. Are you teaching over there, or are you a student? Sounds like you’re teaching (ie, “office hours”).

4

It’s -37 right now here. Cry me a river. I can’t, because my tear ducts are frozen.

5

Okay, I never did this (on the SDMB) last year, but what the hell. I’m back in America now, where I have functioning heat and an insulated apartment.

Last winter was probably the worst period of my entire life. My experience was similar to what sven describes, but it was colder. So cold, in fact, that my pipes froze. I didn’t have running water throughout December and January. When I came home after school, everything in my kitchen that could freeze would be frozen. Olive oil? Frozen. Potato sitting on the kitchen table? Frozen. You name it. To get water, I had to go to the town fountain and haul it back by hand. I used this to flush the toilet, wash dishes, wash clothes (of course I washed my clothes by hand, I didn’t have a washing machine), wash my hair, everything. I had to do this five or six times a day, on icy, unsalted streets. I don’t know how many times I fell on the ice.

I heated my house with a wood-burning stove. Once I got used to it, I liked it (it’s much warmer than electricity), but oh, how I longed for my toasty gas-heated apartment in Chicago. Everything eventually was covered in a thin layer of ash, and smelled of burning. As I walked around my village, I would pick up scraps of wood. I had a lot of logs to burn, but no kindling, so I became a kindling scavenger.

Once, there was a thaw, and the water in my pipes melted. Which burst the pipes, so water sprayed all over the bathroom. Which then froze again overnight. The result was that for several weeks my bathroom was coated in ice. I poured boiling water over it, but eventually that would cool and freeze too and…more ice. I lived in fear that I would slip on the ice and hit my head and die.

The only saving grace is that my village is famous (in Bulgaria) for its hot springs, so a couple times a week, I would go to the sanitarium and swim in their naturally heated indoor pool. They had showers in the locker room, too, so I could wash my hair. It was heavenly.

Good luck, sven. I don’t envy you, but I can empathize. You’ll survive…and then you’ll be able to horrify people with awful stories when they ask how bad you really could have had it in a big city in China.

6

Have you had the pleasure of a Chinese summer yet?

7

Got down to 15 below (F) last night, but I was comfy warm in a well insulated and heated house.

Everything is relative, I guess. I’d rather be here with the Carrier furnace and 8 inches of insulation in the attic.

8

-27F (-33oC) with the wind, here in Minneapolis. Freakin’ frozen wasteland. Brr.

9

Japan has a robot woman who can say “don’t grab my boob,” but they haven’t figured out that you’re supposed to insulate houses anywhere south of Hokkaido.

10

Look, y’all, I know from cold. I live in Michigan. I spent three years living in Chicago. But those places have modern heating and insulation. Trust me when I say that it’s far, far, far more miserable to live without modern amenities someplace only somewhat cold. It’s *way *colder here in the Midwest than it ever was in Bulgaria. But here we have insulation and proper heating and salted roads and when you go inside it’s nice and warm. I’m wearing just a robe at the moment and it’s fine - I often wore my heavy wool winter coat (the one I didn’t break out in Chicago until it dipped below 20F) inside my house in Bulgaria.

You just can’t compare.

11

I had to put my jacket on today.

12

I feel ya, sister. Taught in Korea, and the image of students huddled in parkas is a familiar one …

13

Why can’t you close the windows?

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I’m teaching- I transfered and am doing a second tour with Peace Corps. It has been a huge adjustment from Cameroon, for sure. But China is one hell of a country, and I really love my work here.

FWIW the other American living here is from Wisconsin. She warned me ahead of time that last winter was the most miserably cold period of her life.

It’s not physically that cold, but it’s like you are camping or homeless- it’s just not any warmer inside than outside. Especially at work, since the Chinese custom is to keep doors and widows wide open. My desk is frosty in the morning. And there is no heater to turn on to warm it up. It just stays that way all day. Also I don’t have a car, so I spend a lot of time exposed to the elements. Work is a 20 minute walk in the cold, shopping is a 30 minute walk in the cold. Not that it matters since shops and restaurants aren’t heated anyway. I still choose tables outside because it’s not like it is really any colder out there. Would you really ever have a nice dinner at an outdoor cafe in 40 degree weather? I do, every day (god the food here is good!) Shops have stopped turning on their drink fridges, which is actually really smart. The drinks are just as cold either way.

Chinese people wear their jackets ALL THE TIME. In class. At home. While cooking. While eating at restaurants. They sell these plastic sleeve protectors you slip over the lower half of your arm so that you don’t just trash your coat by wearing it 24/7. They even design jackets specifically to accommodate the sleeve protectors. Pretty smart, really.

Kyla, I don’t know how you PCVs from seriously cold countries do it.

15

This is one of those instances where a Westerner (such as myself) finds the custom rather… inscrutable?

How did “purposely freezing your ass off every winter” become customary in the first place, let alone persist into modern day?

16

You need a SO to sleep with. Cynical, I know, but this is how people functioned before modern amenities: they didn’t divide up at night, they brought in the livestock and all huddled up together. If there is anyone you find at all attractive and appropriate, it’s time to up the time table–no point in getting them in your bed after the spring fall.

(I’m 90% kidding, of course)

17

Poverty, surely. Heat is expensive. Wearing more clothes isn’t (at the margin).

18

But wouldn’t closing windows (that presumably can be closed) help to ameliorate that by just cutting down on drafts and helping to retain body heat within buildings?

19

My current theory is gas leaks. It’s not uncommon to come to find your rickety gas appliances aren’t quite working correctly. Really, if you could see my rusted out, semi-explosive tankless gas water heater you’d probably also sleep with your carbon monoxide at your side. This is probably also the reason why kitchen and bathing areas are often installed semi-outside. My “kitchen” is clearly a small balcony with some half-assedly installed windows to make it a “room”. The toilet and shower rooms are at the end of this, which means when this building was built the poor occupants had to go to actual outside to use them! And my shower room has a HUGE window that takes up a whole wall. Whose crazy idea was that? My apartment is like the Winchester mystery doll house.

Anyway, I’ve been told that a host of diseases will fall on people who dare to close their windows. Now and then I try closing the classroom windows, but it freaks the students out and doesn’t really make things noticeably warmer.

I’ll have to look into this “find an SO” idea.

20

I hadn’t thought of the gas leak angle. If the heating appliances you describe are in that bad of condition, then perhaps leaving the windows open IS a good idea.

Amazing the cultural differences regarding your second paragraph. What a bunch of malarky. But if it doesn’t in fact warm things up, I suppose why bother getting everyone all up in arms about supposed disease contraction.

As an aside, you mentioned how great the food was in a previous post. I’m sure it’s nothing like the Americanized version of Chinese food we see here…so what’s it really like? What are your favorites? Do you know what you’re eating or do you just “eat it and don’t want to know”?

I recall seeing some of your posts regarding the food in Cameroon, so I imagine out of necessity doing what you do requires a bit of an iron stomach!