"Always winter, never Christmas"

Remember that quote, from Narnia? I thought of it today when I checked the weather in Nizhni--twenty-four degrees below zero!! Wow, just wow. Last week, during the freakish cold snap here, I was barely able to stumble to my 7:40am class and it was only three below, though it was windy and still dark. Anyway, I imagined I was in Russia and I inhaled the fresh, snowy morning air sharply in anticipation--before I was overcome by a fit of wheezing. Russia is going to make a man out of me (so to speak), even if I will be wearing skirts and shawls.
Tomorrow night at this time I will have completed this semester and will be packing and cleaning in preparation for a trip to the Stuvland homestead! After what I hope is a break filled with reading, baking, snowboarding and (extreme) sledding, I will be departing for DC on January 6, where I will get to see my darling nephews. Then it's NYC on the 10th (I will turn 21!) and finally St. Petersburg on the 12th.
Eek! I have a lot of reading and language preparation to do before then...
Happy holidays everyone, I'll post probably right before I leave, or maybe soon after I arrive in St. Petersburg.