Saturday, 2 p.m.

Success! We got the car out of the driveway, and to Trader Joe's!

Just in time for tomorrow's storm...

Thursday, 9 p.m.

This is my car (and by "my" I mean "the slav's," but it lives in my driveway). Usually it looks less like a freezer-burned hamburger, and more like a station wagon.

This is usually my driveway, but right now it is 15 horizontal and 3 vertical feet of snow. Who needs the gym when you can shovel?

(Yee-haw!)

Thursday, 8 a.m.

Dwight Street

I went to bed last night with the wind howling, a sharp mixture of snow and ice rattling against my windows. It had been snowing since noon, the flakes piling up on the waist-high snow banks at every street corner--and I was tired of it, tired of winter, and only halfway through it, at best. I peered outside yesterday afternoon, trying to see the beauty in the swirling snow, but only feeling wearied by it.

But I had the great good fortune of waking up at 6:30 this morning to go to my yoga class at the gym a few blocks away. As I stepped out my back door, I gasped--I hadn't realized how much it had snowed. I plodded towards the back gate, snow slipping into my tall rubber boots. I pushed the gate open enough to squeeze through, and scampered through the parking lot behind the house, which had already been plowed. The sky was perfectly clear, the sun not quite risen, a waning moon slung low to the south. The street was almost entirely silent. I walked through the road, since the sidewalks had not yet been clear, delighted. A few cars slowly swooshed past. It's funny how having to do something out of the ordinary like walking in the road makes you interact differently with the people you encounter, makes you more willing to smile and say good morning. There is a solidarity more easily found in such situations, a recognition of a common humanity--we were all just trying to get to where we were going.

My yoga teacher never arrived, and I don't blame her; but I was glad to be out of bed regardless. I did yoga in my bedroom, watched the sun kiss the eastern faces of the houses across the street, then went upstairs to make oatmeal--a perfect snowy morning.

Golden Festival

Slavs went down to Brooklyn this weekend to sing at the Golden Festival, New York's annual Slavic music and dancing bash. In years past it has been held in an elementary school building at the very tip-top of Manhattan--perfectly functional, but funky, and, as had become apparent by last year, too small for the thousands of hipsters, punks, grandmas, and other Balkan enthusiasts that populate the festival. So this year it moved to Brooklyn, to the Grand Prospect Hall. The venue is some kind of Victorian-themed conference center, the main room of which looked like an opera hall--pretty fancy digs for the Golden Festival! It was great, though--brightly lit, and not uncomfortably crowded as it has been in years past.

Slavs sang around 8 pm, to and audience of many of our recent alums, including almost everyone who graduated this past year--the best cheering squad anyone could want. We then had the rest of the night (until 2 am!) to dance our hearts out to ruchenitsas, and later to the raucous brass sounds of Slavic Soul Party and the What Cheer? Brigade. Also to eat cured meats, cheeses, and halva.

One of the highlights of the evening was making our way back to the home of Jenn, one of our alums from last year, on the subway at 3 am with so many other Golden Fest folks. Waiting for the train to come we started to sing--that's what slavs do when we are together, infallibly. We finished a song perfectly in time as the train pulled up, but quieted as we got in and sat down--I consider it tactless to sing when people have no way to escape. A man approached us from the other end of the car. "Will you guys sing another one?" he asked. "Nobody will mind!" So we did--we sang quite a few more. Bear in mind that almost all the people on the train were coming from the same place we were, so they quickly began to dance, Balkan-style, in a moving line snaking through the car. We started to sing "Oi Corna," and just as we were singing the last verse, "I waved goodbye to Ivan at the train station," the subway came to our stop, and we exited, waving and still singing, to delightful cheering. It was really magical--it certainly made my night.

Of course, by the next morning, a video someone had taken on their phone had made its way onto youtube--check it out here!

Snow Dragon

As I said, there was really a lot of snow. Some folks got really creative, and constructed this fantastic dragon on Cross Campus, complete with nose ridge. For more snow photos, go here.

Photo courtesy of Midnight at Yale

A New Year

But out with the old was fun, too--and by that I mean that I had a lovely and relaxing winter break. We got a snowstorm the day after I got home, and I spent the entirely of it in front of the fire, reading. So nice...

El Nino in some La Nina weather

Sangre de Cristo Sunset

My mother and I baked a ton for Christmas--we try to avoid giving people things anymore. I feel like foodstuffs are generally put to better use. We made granola, pumpkin break, Mexican wedding cookies, and oatmeal raisin cookies.

The snow was all gone by Christmas--that whole week was unusually warm. But by New Year's it was really cold, with lows below zero a few times. But a few days later it was warm enough to feel to hot running in leggings and a fleece. Climate change is real.

Most of the time on my break was delightfully lazy--I slept enough, and did so little that I felt a bit guilty. I read three books for fun, and watched movies, and drank copious amounts of tea. I saw family and friends--all the things that feel really good.

Now I am back. It snowed two feet last night. Walking to class this morning (no, it was not cancelled...) was a rather post-apocalyptic experience, with everyone walking in the street like zombies because the sidewalks had not been shoveled. After class, I went sledding with a friend on purloined (not by us) dining hall trays. By then, the sun was about to come out, and it was beautiful, the wind whipping up bits of snow, cars on the road the exception rather than the norm. Walking back to central campus, the sidewalks were swarmed with crews wielding shovels and snowblowers.

I am trying to figure out what classes I am taking, trying to find the best way to finish up this time at Yale. It seems strange to me that it is almost over, but also very right. I am sure I will feel some nostalgia at some point, maybe in April, but for right now, I am relieved, and very much looking forward to being done. So close--but I want to enjoy this semester, too!