Finally winter!

Yesterday the weather forecast promised that we'd have -18 today and I gave it a smirk, because they also said it would be REALLY cold for New Year's eve and we hardly had minus degrees. However, I put on an extra sweater this morning before I walked out of the door.. I got out, sniffed the air and thought, 'silly forecast, this isn't cold'. I walked down the stairs and crossed the square in front of my house and thought, 'Hm, well, it is colder than yesterday, but not -18! (I always have a very hot shower in the morning plus very hot coffee so usually I can't wait to leave the building, because I'm overheating...) Finally, by the time I arrived at the metro I was ready to admit that we indeed have -18 today... but at least the sun is shining! In Moscow it is -25 and Novosibirsk has -40 :-)
I spotted wonderful ice stars in the hallway towards my office though.
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I had a fine weekend with lots of "health activities". First of all, I started to take cold (very short) showers in the morning!
On Friday we had Chunxiao's farewell party (the 1st one in a long list) in her apartment and I refused to get up before noon on Saturday. Sonya had spent the night in my apartment and we were being lazy tattletales till 5 in the afternoon. We finished the day with a great sweating session in a banya with most of the trainees and a great dinner at a Chinese restaurant on Vasileovsky Ostrov - where I used to live in summer.
On Saturday I went skiing - Yay - and made it down all the hills more or less gracefully... at least I didn't fall! :-)
Followed by this was Chunxiao's 2nd farewell party in her apartment. Her 3rd one is taking place tonight and we will see her off at the train station tomorrow! She says she discovered her "housewife" qualities at the age of 32... So, I hope it will also hit me some day! :-)