i have a real knack for missing out on the best east coast snow storms. i spent the past three winters bitching endlessly about how lame the weather was, too warm, not enough snow, etc. so then i leave the country and philly gets slammed with two blizzards that each dump more than a foot of snow on our house. d'oh!
on the other hand, the winter here is taraz (while mild this year according to the natives) is still much better than the average philly winter. we've had a bunch of snow storms in the 6 weeks we have been here. none left more than a foot (pronounced "30 centimeters" in kazakh) but we got about 6 inches (14 cm) yesterday and it's been snowing since we woke up this morning. that was seven hours ago. i'm not sure how much more we will get, piled up on top of the snow from yesterday. during othe past six weeks here, there could be more net snow here than i'm missing in the states.
luckily, we've never had enough to cancel our orphanage visits. they don't seem to cancel anything because of snow here. yesterday, i told our translator about how whenever a snow storm is forecast in the u.s., everyone runs to the supermarket to stock up on food. "why do they do that?" she asked. my question exactly.
meanwhile, almost everyone i know in the mid-atlantic feels compelled to tell me about the snowstorm that i'm missing at home. they roughly fall into two groups: those that say "i bet you're sorry you're missing this!" and those that say "you're lucky to be missing this!" it's a pretty good test of how well these people know me.
