Getting on with life in the cold

I have lived through five winters before this one, two in Russia and three in Canada.  Apparently last Winter in Siberia was particularly hard. (There were 27 days with temperatures below minus thirty.)  Temperatures in the last 5 days got down close to -40. It's hard to know for sure, different people like to boast about how cold in can get in Siberia. The official weather services published -41 as the coldest temperature throught the five days, -35 was very common. Today we are back to -21 and that feels like such an improvement.
The natural inclination is to bunker down and hibernate when it gets so cold. But you can only do that for so long before you go crazy. The fact is you just have to get on with living your life, even if it's hard.

We managed to get on with life as best as possible. Here's a little report of our five days of extreme weather and how we coped.

Thursday:  I went out exploring (crazy I know).  I am trying to find more ways to connect with people and am hitting plenty of brick walls. The local sports centre is for classes at the University only. The pool opens to the public after 7:45pm.  I have been going to a pool in the city center.  I may try the local one sometimes.  I found the building where it is possible to rent cross country skiis.  It's only possible to rent them on the weekend. We haven't had a good opportunity with warm enough weather (anything -15 and above) to give it a shot yet.
I had an amusing and annoying experience at this building. An old man was working security there.  After chatting with him for a while, he asked me if I had my passport with me. Naturally I answered him because I thought it would be in connection with renting skiis. When I told him it was at home he became irrate with me. "You're a foreigner right? I should call the police because you don't have your passport on you."  I proceeded to pull out a photocopy.  "Hold on, I'll get my glasses."  I decided it wasn't worth hanging around any longer.  "Thanks very much for your help, good day." I left without hanging around to see if he would call the police on me. Sometimes it's not fun being set apart as different from Russians, and made to feel guilty for it.

Friday:  Feeling cold from Thursday,  I didn't do any exploring. I was ready to walk to class through the forest. This would have been a challenge at temps below -30.  But I had a stomach pain that was making it hard to concentrate on my studies. Needless to say I stayed home.

Saturday was -40 and I was really feeling like hibernating.  I didn't want to take the kids out anywhere. Our friend Varya invited us to see her and her dance troupe perform in a festival across town.  Eventually after arguing about how cold it was and whether we would cope Melody and I found a baby sitter and set out for an adventure in the freezer. We couldn't find a taxi to come an pick us up. But as we made it down to the bus stop we flagged one down.  A car accident slowed the traffic down, and a 20 minute trip was turned into a 45 minute one. We did make it in time for half of the performances, including the Sakha dance troupe. (More on that later). I'm glad we ventured out. As we made it back to the bus stop, we found another taxi. Taxis can be very hard to find at -40. So we didn't have to spend much time waiting around in the cold.

Sunday:  We were ready to stay home again. But after one successful attempt on Saturday we decided that we could take the kids out, so long as we had a taxi from door to door in both directions.  We called our regular driver to take us to our friend's house.  Georgii only works until 3pm though, so he could not drive us home.  After spending the afternoon with Garry and Christy and their kids (who are incidentally Aussies), we attempted to get a taxi home. We called a company, but after three attempts they kept asking us to wait longer. Thankfully Garry decided to start up his car and brave the weather to take us home.  Poor Garry has to get up in the middle of the night to start his car a few times. If he doesn't do this it won't start in the morning. It's so much easier running a car in cold weather in Canada than it is in Russia.

Monday: Day five of the cold, cold weather. By this point I had decided that a little bit of cold wasn't going to get me down. I went for a swim at the pool in morning. Everybody, including me, was completely rugged up on the bus. Normally on the bus one will take their hat and gloves off as it's too hot, but not in this weather.
In the afternoon I had class. I was determined to get there this time. I was still not brave enough for the half hour trek through the forest. I decided to get the bus. I would have take a taxi if one were available. I had to wait 15 minutes for the first bus and then a further 15 for the connecting bus.  The bus route is further distance than the walk through the forest. In all it took me an hour to get to class and 30 minutes of this was outside anyway. I felt like I maybe should have tried walking.
After class I called one of our tax drivers. He wasn't working. I wasn't going to wait a long time for another bus, so I decided to brave the walk. With your face covered the cold is not too bad. But I did end up getting icicles on my eye lashes. The rest of me was reasonably warm though. The walk didn't up being too bad after all. My confidence for facing the extreme temperatures has grown a little. It would have been much harder if it was windy though. Windchill can make it many degrees colder.

Today it's -21, but it's windy. I think I'll still cover my face as I walk through the forest to class.

Check back in a few weeks to see if I have gone crazy yet.

(No photos as yet because I didn't want to expose my camera at those temperatures.  The whole city is one big frost bowl. There is hoar frost on all the trees, which is really pretty. This happens because, despite it being -40 the river is not frozen over. Why? There is a hydro electric power station that keeps the water at +4, even in the depths of Winter. When the really cold weather hits it sends a cloud of fog over the entire city. Visibility is really bad and there is frost on all the trees.)