How Cold Was It?

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Well, why not.

Actually, there are quite a few reasons that I shouldn't have.

I'd lived over a decade in Florida, half my life. All but one year of my life was spent below the Mason-Dixon Line. The most snow I'd seen in Jacksonville allowed my next door neighbors, using all of the snow in their yard, to build a snow man that was the size of something Ken and Barbie could have made. Israel, in Hachshara, had had some snow, but it really wouldn't be anything to scare a Northerner.

So, realistically, it might sound kind of stupid for me to spend my winter break in Norway.

But I had friends I wanted to visit, plus, it is pretty cool to say that you spent the winter in Norway.

So, for winter break, my trip consisted of visiting London, staying there a week, flying to Norway for two weeks, and then, back to England, to spend a week in Manchester. I'd visit the people from Hachshara, see the sites that they were so certain were better than what was in America. The American's back home however, were absolutely certain I was insane.

"Maggie wants to tell you that you're nuts for going to Sweden in the winter."

"Tell Maggie that she heard wrong."

"You're not going? Brains kicked in?"

"Not to Sweden. NORRRWAYY."

(I said this because I had learned an important rule, the hard way. Do not confuse the Scandinavian countries' names in front of a Scandinavian. They will take tremendous insult, because to a representative of any of the given countries views the other countries as subordinate.)

It was cold, I'm not going to tell you that I went around in shorts in either Britain or Norway, but it wasn't so bad. In England it barely snowed, in Norway it did, but not the huge snowstorms I had expected. I had two warm coats, I had a hat, I had the scarf, I was fine. It wasn't the cold that was the problem; it was getting used to the necessities of being in the cold. First of all, I had no idea how to put on the scarf. (Is it not the stupidest article of clothing? ^It can't be as simple as just wrapping it around your neck once, can it?^) And I had to buy five or six new pairs of gloves, because I'd keep leaving them on the busses, or the stores, or anywhere that I suddenly had the urge to...have access to my hands, or something as silly as that.

Of course, being barehanded in the cold was survivable. It should be no surprise that I got lost in England...and Norway...repeatedly...and therefore was often rubbing my bare hands together outside. However, it never really got below -10 C, (14 F) so, baruch Hashem, I never got more anything worse than chilled hands.

It could have been worse. Oh, it could have been much worse. I saw this on the news, and people kept talking about this. In northern Norway, it got below negative fifty degrees, Celsius. Actually, when it gets that cold, negative fifty degrees Celsius is pretty close to negative fifty Fahrenheit. They showed this guy on the news, who for reasons I have yet to fathom, was actually reporting from this near tundra location. He threw a cup of boiling water in the air, and it landed frozen.

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And now we return :

Everybody kept repeating this. It was kind of cool (NPI) but it was so often repeated that I tried it myself. Keep in mind that at the time I was in Oslo. Oslo is cold, and of course freezing, but not Arctic temperatures. So, I figured I'd use lukewarm water, see if it worked.

Yes, ok, I'm stupid. It was above zero Fahrenheit, which I'd been through before and should have known that this would not work. OK, well, that may not look so stupid. But the next day when I slipped on the ice that I had created...I did feel like a total moron.

Get me outa here!!!

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Badguy4

"In the wine of life, some people are designed to be corksniffers." --Dilbert.