I’m No Stranger to the Snow

I’ve spent more than one Halloween trick-or-treating with my costume bulging hideously over my winter jacket and carrying my pillowcase with gloved hands. I have also celebrated my April birthday in blizzard conditions more than once. So I know what a long winter is. I know snow. I know cold. I own a winter jacket, gloves, hat, scarf, snow pants, boots, long underwear, and wool socks.

That being said, I spent last winter in San Diego, California. I played volleyball on the beach on New Year’s Day, wearing shorts!

Beach Volleyball in San Diego

Not only that, but before I got my official Peace Corps invitation, I was expecting to serve in the “Central/South America/Caribbean” region of the world. (Translate that to “hot weather year-round.”)

Armenia, you make me weep a frozen tear when I think about this….

I took the following photo on October 2, 2011:

The mountains surrounding my town look more like mountains, and the snow line is getting closer!

With this white stuff ominously (and quite visibly) creeping closer, winter preparation whipped into a frenzy around my house. My host mom didn’t can as much stuff as other families, but she got into it a little bit with canned peaches and “compote” (basically any kind of fruit made into a juice). She also put vegetables drying in the sun wherever there was window or floor space.

Canned Peaches

Peppers drying on the floor

For two days, we unearthed, sorted, and gathered all the potatoes from our (mostly potato) garden. Kevin and Laura both helped, which I know was a huge relief to my host mom. And one day, when I got home from school, I saw that hay had been delivered for our cow to eat during the winter. Our cow will eat 1/2 a bale a day. We got 100 bales. (Please let winter not be that long!)

My town is known for its good potatoes.

We got 100 bales of hay delivered one day, and Kevin and I helped my host mom stack them all into the barn.

I currently live at an elevation of 6339 feet (or 1900 meters if you’re metrically inclined). We got our first “real” snow on October 20, 2011. Ironically, (or something a little more sinister) that morning before it started snowing, I bought a pair of boots, having no idea that by the time I was done working for the day I would be plodding home in thick, wet snowflakes and waiting for the plow to pass before crossing the road.

Fortunately, the snow didn’t stick. By morning most of it was melted. Two days later, in the warming sunshine, Kevin, Laura, and I went for hike to some nearby hills and found a patch of snow, the perfect consistency for building snowmen.

After our first good snow, we went for a hike, found a good patch of unmelted white goodness and sculpted it into a little family.

The weekend before Halloween, we took a trip to a fellow volunteer’s house, over a winding mountain pass. At first we thought there was just fog. Then we reached the flurries. It was beautiful, but….

A recent trip over a mountain pass gave us a good taste of things to come.

The snow is getting closer...

Snow and Berries

Now there is more snow predicted for this weekend. I’m hunkered next to my electric space heater, the only (inadequate) source of heat in my bedroom. My host mom’s gas heater was installed in the living room a few days ago, but the heat does not extend this far.

I am wearing a sweater, my jacket, a scarf, and my blanket.

I’d type more, but my fingers are about to freeze off of my hands.