Bitterly cold days when every sound echoes for miles and you can see your breath midday and no amount of warm socks will defrost your toes make me think of my childhood in Russia. They remind me of late afternoons when I would trudge home in my ten pound fur coat, arriving home just as twilight would blanket the sky. They remind me of the crunch of the snow under my feet and the way I would crack icy puddles with my boots. They remind me of dogs barking late into the night, probably in frustration from being too cold. When I think of winter and Russia I think of quiet, darkness and the overwhelming feeling that we were all just biding time until spring. There was a perceivable hush that would lie over life until the first drip drop could be heard from your roof, often not until mid-April.
That's what I love about life here so, so much - how often it reminds me of my life back in Russia. The simplicity, the silence, the way the cashiers at grocery stores strike up genuine conversations, the dogs barking in the distance and the braying of horses, the mud and the ease with which one day rolls into the next.
When I close my eyes, sometimes, I am instantly transported to my tiny little desk next to our bunk bed where I'm working on my homework and the radiator is hissing and my feet are cold and it's dark outside and I am ten years old again...