Cold enough for ya?!

I think that weather differences between TZ and the US are probably the single most disconnecting experience for me....seeing Facebook pictures of people frolicking in the leaves there (while it's still hot here), then playing in the snow there (while it's even hotter here) and then seeing the joy of winter move into spring there (while it's still hot here although slightly less so).  As opposed to there, the seasonal difference here between hot and less hot seasons is not all that much - maybe 30 degrees Fahrenheit, a few percentage points of humidity.  The landscape doesn't change all that much from season to season.  Although different flowers bloom at different times, there's always something blooming.  And although the grass gets pretty burned up in dry season, it's certainly nothing like the absolute absence of living foliage in winter in the U.S.

This week in particular highlights this difference between our two worlds.  On the East Coast, it is brutally cold and yet here the weather is causing me to melt into a puddle.  A friend and I calculated that one day last week, her wind chill factor of -25 F and our heat index factor which neared 120 F meant that our weather was separated by over 140 degrees!  That's really hard to wrap my brain around.  As another friend said, "Are we on the same planet?"  Pretty amazing.

I think that memories of extreme weather must be kept in the same place of my brain that also stores memories of childbirth pain.  It's as though every year, I have a new realization of how (hot/cold/rainy) it is as I've completely forgotten about the past years and what they were like.

Because of this seasonal amnesia, I literally cannot imagine being as cold as my U.S. friends.  I've totally forgotten what it means to scrape your car, catch snowflakes on your tongue, layer up, have melting snow puddles by the door, have your lungs hurt when breathing the outside air and all the side inconveniences of the season (dry skin, chapped lips, running noses) that comes at this time.  In the same way, I doubt whether they can imagine how intense the equatorial sun feels as it beats down for weeks on end, the fact that your shirt sticks to you already by 9 a.m., the humidity blanketing everything, etc.

Everybody talks about the weather (although everyone complains about how lame that is).  It's definitely a socializing topic as probably no one will be offended by a shared dislike of windchill.  It's just this communal bond that I'm missing these days with my U.S. friends as I'm definitely not missing the actual offending weather (although a nice 60 degree day would be heavenly right about now).  I joked to Tim that we haven't even experienced the temperature that we used to heat the inside of our home in the winter, for almost 2 years.  Brrrr!

Stay warm, U.S. friends!
Keep cool, Dar friends!