It's positively BALMY out here! It's gotta be, what, forty degrees?

Fahrenheit, people.  (My Celcius people are thinking, "Yeah, Kaley, forty degrees is PRET-ty balmy alright.  What Scotland are YOU living in?")

So there's been snow on the ground for about the past two weeks, and this past Friday I woke up to an abrupt thaw.  Suddenly there was green grass again--patches of it, at least--and they grew throughout the day.  There's still some ice on the ground in the places direct sunlight doesn't hit*, but the weirdest thing has been that my concept of temperature has been completely thrown off.  I walked outside, saw ice both on the ground and on the pond near my building, and promptly pulled my hat off and opened my coat because I was so warm.  The temperature can't have risen much above freezing, but compared to the past couple of weeks where there was this bitter chill that just cut straight through whatever I wore, it felt so nice!!  I thought it felt nice!  Me!  I hate the cold!  I can't even guess how cold it actually was outside because I know it had to be near freezing, but it felt so pleasant.  Not warm, but warmER, crisp instead of bitter.  I'm acclimating, and it's weird.

*However, I am NOT acclimating to this "short winter days" thing.  Really, I never took that idea seriously before now.  At home, our days get, what, an hour shorter?  Two?  Seriously, we're down to about 7 hours of daylight here.  I can barely tell when the sun rises (I think it happens around 8-8:30) because it comes up at such a shallow angle that you don't know when or where it crossed the horizon unless you actually see it), and when I left my flat at 11:40 for church (noon service) this morning, the light quality and sun position looked about the way they do at home at about 9:30 in the morning.  And it just starts setting from there.  Walking home around 1:45 it looked like late afternoon, 4:30ish, and at 3:00 I was standing in the window trying to catch the last rays before it dipped below the trees.  It's 4:00 and dusk, and by 4:30 it will be completely dark.  My Zimbabwean friend and I (I admit it, it's even worse for her than for me) just walk around shaking our heads and really understanding the concept of hibernation for the first time.