It's cold in Calgary

I know, I know - this is common knowledge. But even if you know it in your head, it is a completely different thing to experience it. Let me delve a little deeper into this subject...

Picture a stereotypical Canadian winter. In my mind, I see a female newscaster, leaning on an expensive looking desk, a bank of TV's as her background. Her face is a mixture of severity and sympathy as she reports the news of the day.

'Another cold snap in Canada this week. Temperatures plummet to -35 send residents into hiding, unwilling to brave the snow blowing winds except for the most dire of circumstances.' The screen then jump cuts to a cityscape, where pedestrians are unrecognizable, even to their loved ones, as they are wrapped head to toe in varying degrees of protection against the freezing winds. These people are hunched forward, trying to wrap into themselves in hopes of avoiding the cold, holding their collars tight around their scarf covered faces as they hustle from one overheated safe haven to the next.

This is Calgary.

It is so bitterly cold that waiting for the bus is like standing outside, dripping wet, buck naked - in Antarctica. Getting on the bus is blissful, but ultimately awful, because the times comes (too soon even for your fingers to regain feeling in the tips) when you have to leave and rejoin the other penguins.

It would be awesome if we could be more like penguins, you know what I mean? How they huddle together, lending each other their body heat as they take turns shuffling around the outsides so that some of them can warm for a little while?

Calgarians don't do that.

On the upside, all the buildings overcompensate by upping their heat to an above average temperature, so it all evens out in the end.

Only, not really.

This is my first impression of my new home. It sounds unfavourable, but I actually quite like it. I haven't seen a lot of the city, but what I have seen, I like. Except the roads, don't get me started on the roads.

This is my first blog from my shared Katima-Computer. My roomies are playing some kind of zombie apocalypse game in the back ground. It's interesting background noise. Anyway, I will blog as often as I find the time... once a week or so. Maybe, if I'm lucky. But I will try to keep you informed of my goings on.

Please don't forget about me as I shiver to death in the Prairies.

With all my frozen love, I bid you farewell.