A Winter Wonderland

After arriving back just over two weeks ago, it has been a crash course in acclimatizing to the full force of winter here in South Bend. We have both adopted our own coping methods at home to deal with this foreign climate…which while admittedly illogical… seem to have enabled us to function relatively well despite sub-zero temperatures. Jennifer has decided that during the winter there will be no blinds open in the apartment…thus no doubt enabling her to assume that there could just as easily be a Hawaiian beach outside our window as the two feet of snow that actually exists. I, on the other hand, have simply refused to change my ways while in the apartment …convinced that if I dress like it is a summer’s day…then it will become a summer’s day. Thus, despite occasionally donning warmer clothes to venture outside, I still insist on
wearing shorts and a singlet most of the time…or as Kyle would put it…fighting the battle against sleeves…even in this unforgiving terrain.

Admittedly, it is a very beautiful time of year…regardless of the disruption it causes. It is truly spectacular to see the otherwise hideous landscape of South Bend Indiana coated in a layer of white pristine snow. Furthermore, the naive realization last week that snowflakes actually do look like the ones in the cartoons brought quite an unexpected amount of excitement. As amazing as this is however, it is slightly dampened as you skid around corners, and watch people slide through busy intersections desperately trying to unlock their brakes. Not to mention of course, the fact that you can’t tell where the road ends and the curb begins…turning driving into a momentous challenge and something akin to an adult version of Dodgem/Bumper Cars…

So as the wind-chill factor takes the temperature here to -3F/-20C, and my poor mother continues to regret the day she found a website with South Bend’s weather report, Jen and I continue to live in denial…especially with only a few months of winter left…hmmm.