Snow in Cabo 11/10/08

Snow in Cabo 
11/10/08

Weather:
Snow, lots of it
Temp -5.5 and falling
Wind 10-15 mph (makes for cold cheeks)

First, thank you Emily. That was so sweet to ask your sister to write my uncle's name in the sand. I am just blown-away by the imagery of that simple act. For those of you who want to know what this is about, go to www.sandwritten.blogspot.com and see. Emily is a soft, gentle soul with a sensitivity to people's personal loss. I love you Emily. Thank you.

There is snow in Cabo. For the uninitiated, Cabo is our storage room. It is attached to the extra bedroom and is an enclosed balcony that was filled with junk when we first moved it. During the summer, It faces south and could get in the high 90's in there with the sun coming in most summer mornings. We decided to make it into a "sun-room" and set up a chair facing the windows to get a tan. We called it the Cabo Room in honor of our time-share in Cabo San Lucas, at the tip of Baja California, because when I hung the clothes to dry in there, the humidity got close to 100% and with the temperature, well, it was like Cabo.

Well, several weeks ago we "closed Cabo" because of the frost. (See the earlier blog) Over the weekend, it snowed pretty steadily and there was snow on the windowsill giving it a winter coat. Now that winter is settling in, we will not be visiting Cabo again unless it is to get the shredded cabbage & carrot mixture in the two jars recently placed there after Cindy got the cabbage preservation lesson from the 2nd Branch Relief Society sisters last week.

This is going to be our world for the next 6 months. They say it starts to get really cold in mid November and hits its peak around February. Then it gradually gets warmer (less below zero) until spring; around late April.

We walked home in the falling snow for the first time tonight. We had to stay late (7:45) and it was pretty dark so we took the long way down Kirova Street to the right (south) from the office, then right again (west) down Sacco & Vanzetti to our house. It was slippery, windy, and cold. My cheeks were burning when I finally got inside our building. I see why people wrap their scarves around their faces. We will learn how to deal with the cold.

Thursday we will go shopping (Fri's District Meeting). I am going to look for some "skid-pads" for my shoes. Elder Worthen showed his to me and I think that is the ticket. It is like the non-slip strips you put in the tub. We'll see.

This is us just after coming into the apartment tonight. That is the hall leading to the kitchen. You can't see the snow that was covering our coats because it melted on the way up in the stinky elevator. Do I look Russian yet?

We had the Young Singles in on Sunday night. At church, I asked one of them if the weather would stop some of them from coming. She looked at me like I had just said the earth was flat and retorted, "This is Siberia. We'll be there"; and they were.

There are a lot of things that people do without here and there are a lot of things that just don't work. However, the people have a tremendous capacity to suffer through and cold, while not their friend, is not feared. They are like a severly abused child looking at a teacher who has just swatted it on the bottom, with a look like "is that the best you've got?" They will live and work through the Siberian Winter and be glad for the spring, but having not feared the cold.

What a country.
DS