Friday, February 7th - Winter is back

I guess my message that winter was over was premature; it's back. It's f...n cold. We had 2 degrees this morning. Now before you get all excited and start calling us whimps because you're freezing your butts back home at -25 or -30, read the rest. Our building is made of cement and every room has an outside wall. The only thing that separates inside from outside is about 6 inches of cement. That's it. Nothing else. There's no mineral wool insulation or foam or styrofoam on the walls; there basically a coat of paint, which has an R factor of not much. Our floor covering is ceramic tiles, placed on a cement floor. That too gets pretty cold. There are no carpets or hardwood floors or linoleum that can act as insulation from the cold cement. Add to this that there are no furnaces in the building. We do not have that big Lennox forced air natural gas furnace to warm up the place like you do. We have a small space heater with a little fan that tries to blow warm air in the apartment. It works OK when the temperature is around 10 degrees - it does take the chill out, but when its colder than that, it's just not powerful enough to heat the place. Go spend some time in your cold room if you have one, feel the walls, and let me know what you think. OK, our walls aren't that cold but hopefully you get the picture. So yes, we are wearing long sleeved shirts and sweaters in the apartment, and it's still chilly. We also know that in a few months, when its 40 degrees outside, we'll look back at days like today and wish we could have a bit of that cold air. But for now, it's cold!

The work week was fine. Jacqui joined the teachers and students from her school that went to Kidzania on Thursday; she thought it was a pretty cool place (click on the link to see their video). She is still tutoring a few kids and really enjoys it.

The winter games don't seem to be a big priority in Kuwait - I don't even think that they are aware of this event. We will try to follow online, but we can't stream from the CBC website. It will be a challenge to watch the games. I'm sure someone at school will figure something out. In the meantime, Let the Games Begin!