Sometimes winter arrives over night...

Well, kids, I think I’m officially roughing it, and not just according to the fridge magnet Heather gave me freshman year (“My idea of roughing it is when room service is late”). It got freezing cold here, and snowed on and off all last night and today, and the walls of my glorified trailer suddenly seem to be made of cardboard. All the heating is electric, and all the electric is controlled by a greedy meter, which you feed with coins. I cook wearing my winter jacket (no heater in the kitchen), and my biggest daily challenge is getting out of my pajamas in an unheated bathroom to take a shower. My breath comes out in little white clouds. Forget about how many words the Eskimo have for snow, what about their words for feeling cold?

Sometimes you really wonder how Britain ever managed to become an imperialist power when they continued living in the modern equivalent of caves…