"Это настоящая зима" ("This is true winter"), my Russian language teacher told me yesterday morning.  It was cold yesterday morning when she said that.  It is already much colder now, 36 hours later.  I wonder what Russian word she would use for the current conditions out there.  As I write this it's -17 C (1 degree F).  I just took Kona on her (very brief) nighttime walk a little while ago, and for the first time since last winter I experienced the sensation of my nose hairs freezing.*

The forecast for the next week or so looks like this, in summary:

Tomorrow: Partly cloudy, high of -14 (+7 F)
Thursday: Blizzard
Friday: Blizzard
Saturday: Snow, low of -22 (-8 F)
Sunday: Partly cloudy, high of -16 (+3 F), low of -19 (-2 F)
Monday: Blizzard

This weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) is the 3-day seminar we've been planning and for which we've been preparing for quite some time.  It will be interesting to see how it plays out with the weather.

We take Wednesdays as our day off, but I think my priorities tomorrow will be pretty dominated by winter: 1) Get winter tires put on the van. 2) Buy some kind of insulating foam lining for our apartment's very old windows, which let in drafty cold air like no one's business.

In other news, we've been buzzing with activity here, particularly in our apartment.  Last Thursday was our team's weekly small group time together, which we hosted this time around.  Then Friday we had a young lady over for the first time, named Katya, with whom we will be studying weekly.  Saturday was Silas' birthday party, for which we welcomed about 17 guests who were able to come.  It went extraordinarily well.  Saturday evening Eileen Emch moved in with us.  She is a friend of ours who is a missionary in Russia and is in Kharkov for a while to renew her visa for Russia.  Sunday we had both our morning English, and evening Russian, assemblies in our home, feeding lunch to the gang in between.  Monday morning, our friend Nadya came over for our weekly Bible study with her, which was immediately followed by our team prayer time, which we also held in our apartment.

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*OK, to be precise, it's actually the moisture on my nose hairs freezing, causing the hairs themselves to be held rigid by the frozen moisture encasing them.  And now it's clear why I just prefer to call it "my nose hairs freezing." 

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