Oh, the weather outside is frightful....

Hello my friends. This has been a absolutely wonderful trip and great experience. I actually got paid for my family and I to work, live and travel in Europe. So, my whining might seem trivial, but I can’t hold this back any longer..... the weather sucks!

I arrived in Poland in mid-September. It was a warm day. I had brought with me my favorite kind of shirt, the short-sleeve golf/polo type shirt. In fact, I brought an entire suitcase full of them. I wore exactly one on my first day here- and none since. Every morning I open my closet door, and they hang there, dusty, just mocking me.

In my 9 months here- I have not donned a pair of shorts yet either. I forgot what my legs look like (I fondly recall them being cute- but who knows anymore).

As you see we are in Mid-May: and people are still wearing scarves and hoods outside. I saw several still wearing knit caps this week.

We did make a big leap in clothing however. About 3 weeks ago, I went from my winter coat to now a hooded jacket.

When Lisa and I accepted this assignment- we of course knew we were going north and things tended to get cool. However, we consulted several weather sources. It told us, as Gdansk was on the Baltic Sea, it did not get the extremes of the rest of Poland. In fact, the average temperature for the winters was a reasonable low 30s. Now for someone trained in statistics- average means about 1/2 the days below and 1/2 above 30. In reality, it did not break 30 degrees once for 3 1/2 months. Thats right, we did not break the freezing mark (not one damn time) for 3 1/2 months. Average my @#$@#.  On any given day, we are 10-15 degrees below the "typical" and have been since we arrived.

Everyone in Gdansk told us how unusual of a winter this was. Yeah, right. The sad truth was, we flew to Scotland in February, just to warm up.

So, we have now entered the “spring that never came”. While it is above freezing, our typical April and May day has been in the 40s. Now, this is when the Baltic Sea effect does come into play. The winds come off the sea- so you still have a wind chill, even when it is 48 or 50.

We so desperately want some nice days to sit outside, without jackets. I never thought in a million years the thing I would miss most about KC was its weather. At least you have variation. For most days, Lisa is still drying clothes inside (it takes 2-3 days to dry one load of clothes hung inside); as it is cool and damp- not clothes drying weather.

The worst is long over, but just moving ever so slowly. A bright spot (literally) is the sun. In the dead of winter, the sun showed up about 8 or 9am. Today, it was full daylight at 4:30am. You could have played a baseball game at 4:30 in the morning. The sun will go down tonight about 9pm.

I assume transportation limitations has made everything feel worse. To get out of the house, you can’t just walk 10 feet to your car, and drive the front entrance of the local Applebees to get rid of cabin fever. We are now at the mercy of outdoor public transportation. I use to think it was such as hassle to get into my car and drive to Brookside to my campus. Now, I walk a 1/2 mile, wait outside for up to 30 minutes for a tram, ride the tram, then walk another 1/2 mile to my office.

Alright, enough complaining. I just have a severe case of cabin fever from this never ending winter, that still seems present in May.

As I said to my friend the other day, if the weather is the worst part of getting a chance to live in Europe for a year- then life can’t be so bad (but I will still complain).