on how life is different when it's cold

My thermometer reads 62’f, but it’s quite cold, I swear – I’m wearing a long sleeved tshirt, short-sleeved tshirt, sweater and fleece jacket, khaki pants and wool socks. Yesterday’s rain brought a blast of cold weather that they say is here to stay, for a few days at least (then it could get hot again. That’s “winter” here).

When it’s cold it’s very very very hard to get out of bed in the morning. During the summer I bound out of bed at 530am, excited to run before the sun heats everything up, and I love doing laundry and sweeping and getting out of the house by 8am, but this morning it was a struggle to get up at 9am. I don’t shower right away, instead I do whatever work or errands and come home again around noon to work out, shower and eat. If it’s sunny out it can be warm by midday (I ran last week in just a long sleeved tshirt) but if it’s cloudy like today it doesn’t warm up at all, plus it’s windy which is jut torture. By 5pm, it’s dark out and even colder and everyone’s in their house, presumably huddled under blankets like I am.

In addition to “adios,” people on the street today have greeted me with “!que frio!” which is I guess the Paraguayan version of “cold enough for ya?” And we drink mate all day, instead of just in the morning. Mate is terere with hot water, drunk with the same guampa and bombilla (cup and metal straw), and it’s what is drunk all the time in Argentina and Uruguay. It’s good to sip on every few minutes and warm yourself from the inside. Last year I didn’t drink much of it but today I’ve had my little teapot by my side all day long. My skin has also gotten instantaneously drier and I’m drinking fresh-squeezed orange and grapefruit juice, trying to prevent a cold from this crazy weather.