Let it snow...

Date: 11/9/08

We had our first and second snow fall in my region. I SAW SNOW!!! I know that this may seem like a minor event in the life of an average person but for someone who has never lived farther north than Waco, Texas, snow is a huge ordeal. As in, it was my first time to see snow.

It could not have come at a better time. After a few tough weeks, I had been looking forward to seeing other volunteers that weekend. On Saturday night, walking back to the apartment after dinner the temperature began to drop. It had been raining all day and there is nothing better than being in wet clothes as the temperature drops below freezing. The guys had stopped to run an errand. When they came back, they entered flicking snow off their coats and announced that it had snowed. As intelligent as I am, I jumped up and raced for the balcony forgetting that I was not wearing a coat or socks. They attempted to thwart my excitement by telling me it was too warm and the snow wasn’t sticking to the ground. After the initial shock of watching the snow fall wore off, I realized how cold it was and ran back inside. Since my clothes were drying on the heating pipes,* I crawled inside my mummy sleeping bag and quite literally inched my way back out to the balcony.

The next morning I woke up a littler earlier than the rest of the people. Chris told me that I should look outside. And what did I see? A blanket of white over all of the ground. There was not much snow on the window seal, maybe 2 cm, but I still managed to make a tiny snowball. It is great fun being with people from states like Alaska, Oregon, Connecticut and Vermont when you see snow for the first time. As I am mesmerized by the crunching sound beneath my feet, they keep warning me to watch out for ice. None of the attempts to explain why nearly ankle deep snow is no fun registered with me. On the way to breakfast, Annie made a softball sized snowball for me to throw at Nick. It was a fantastic idea…

…Two days later it snowed again. I came up with a brilliant plan. All the way to work I had been practicing making snowballs but I only had inanimate objects like trees and walls to throw them at. Through a text message, my friend Micah pointed out that “humans make much better targets.” I already had plans to meet my site mate, John, and a volunteer from a nearby village, Serena, later that afternoon. When I got off work 30 minutes early, I called Serena and told her to meet me in the park. I filled a plastic sack with handmade snowballs. Snowballs made by hand without gloves, a mistake I will never again make. I made her hide in the bushes with me and wait for John to show up. The brilliant plan for the surprise attack would have worked better if John had not showed up late, come up the pathway behind us, and if the bag filled with snowballs had not broken when I went to throw one. Nevertheless, it was still an amusing seen to witness.


*note: Buildings in Kyrgyzstan are heated by pipes filled with hot water. And in a land without dryers, these pipes dry clothing with amazing speed.