[L]: Hello Friends! We just celebrated Thanksgiving and it was a great time reflecting on all that we've been given. We are so thankful for all of you and for the ways you continue to be an encouragement to us!
The weather here has recently taken a turn for the worst. It has been wet and rainy for the past few days, and the temperature is gradually getting lower and lower. The thought of riding our bikes to class early morning against the biting wind blowing against us brings me some degree of mental agony. Furthermore, the thought of sitting in class in the pure concrete building (with no heat) makes me feel like we have class in a refrigerator (or freezer). We wear different layers of clothes, our fleece, our coats, our mittens, our longjohns, and it still feels cold! Our teacher found us another classroom with windows with more sun. Yay -- Hope! It's brighter, yes. But still cold, nevertheless. So, we are going to wear more layers of socks, clothes, longjohns... And if all else fails, we have even conspired with our classmates to invest in a portable mini-heater, carry it in our bicycle basket, and take it to class each day. =) We just have to make sure there is an outlet in the classroom. Our local friends (who apparently are used to this weather) laugh at us, as they say this is "nothing." Rather, it's really "only the beginning of the winter." Sigh...we are such weather-weaklings.
Well, with this changing weather, we have another problem. Because of the humidity (so much moisture in the air) and cold weather, our clothes won't dry! Remember last month, I wrote an entry about actually "enjoying" hang-drying our clothes (laundry)? Well, it's no longer that simple. We hang our wet clothes on the laundry line, only to come back the next day, seeing it still wet. Probably now soaked with condensation too. Even our towels in the bathroom stay wet as well. (Did we mention that our bathroom has no bathtub? Or shower stalls? It's just one big spray, and it wets the whole room when we shower. We finally managed to hang a little shower curtain in hopes of shielding the spray, but it doesn't do much as water just runs everywhere.)
So, back to the clothes-line, we now have to lay an electric fan flat on the floor, so that it would blow straight up into the hanging clothes. Now, with the fan, the clothes get reduced to various degrees of dampness. (We have made some headway.) Then, we take the "damp" clothes inside and try to lay it near our heater. (There is no central heater, just room heater.) And at last, the little heater helps take out the final moisture, and we now have clean clothes. =) Voila!
Life in our new 'hood...
