Little and often, right?

At least that's what I said two weeks ago, and then didn't really do. Anyway...

The Weather

English people get accused of talking about the weather a lot, and rightly so. It's my theory that we're not naturally predisposed to talk about the weather, it's just that the weather in England merits a bit more talking about than other countries. For example, in February 2008 I stared out of my office window at the cloudless blue sky over London. The thermometer read 18C. I mentioned to my boss that we should commence the cricket season now, as it would doubtless chuck it down all summer (it did). In February 2009 I taught an English class based on a newspaper article describing the two feet of snow that had fallen on England. Guatemalans, on the other hand, don't talk so much about the weather. It's difficult to raise much of a comment (unless you're a taxi driver) when the weather is hot and dry for 8 months of the year, then hot with two hours of rain in the afternoon for the other 4. So you see, we talk about it more because more happens.

I don't know if people talk about the weather much in my town. I bet they do though, as it's definitely pretty interesting here. This morning I believe I may have discovered a whole new kind of weather. Small chunks of ice blown horizontally were hitting me in the face as I walked across the bridge to school. What was this strange phenomenon? Light sideways hail? I'd like a Met Office team to come out and have a look at this, especially as the sun was out when it happened. The weather here is entirely unpredictable. We had sun and warmth all last week; tonight while I ate dinner at a friend's a light dusting of snow fell. One day it's raining, the next beautiful sunshine. I carry my umbrella every day just in case. The one constant seems to be wind. There's always at least a stiff breeze blowing through the valley, if not a full on gale. One day it was blowing in the front of our building so hard that the lift (elevator, international readers) doors wouldn't shut and I had to climb the ten flights of stairs to my apartment. This wasn't cool. What will be worse than cool is next winter, where temperatures will drop to around -20C. There's also Monsoon season to look forward to in a couple of months time. Not brilliant, but certainly not boring.

The weather also varies drastically town to town. I don't think we've had more than three or four inches of snow at a time here. In the ski town 15 minutes away they had about 24 inches overnight. This had two consequences that I am aware of. One, the English teacher there had to dig himself out of his house, and two, I was able to take this photo:

OK, I have now rambled for so long about the weather that I don't have time to tell you about anything else. So not only have I reinforced a negative stereotype of Brit's being weather obsessed nerds, I also don't have time to tell you about how I mistook a girl for a boy in class today. Maybe tomorrow...

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