At 8h17 this morning I woke up to a French girl screaming outside of my window followed by a peal of laughter. More shocked at hearing the scream than annoyed, I gathered up the energy to roll up my blind only to discover the ground and cars were all covered with a fine sheet of white.
Snow.
I've been hearing about snow in Richmond for the past two weeks as it has come to my inbox and exploded on my FB and Twitter feeds. And with each new announcement I have grown steadily more and more depressed at actually missing the one winter when it snows at home. So waking to it this morning actually made me smile, even if the accumulation here was less than half an inch.
That smile quickly slipped from my face two hours later as I tried to make my way from my dorm to the tram stop in my no-tread Chucks. In the middle of my careful path down the sidewalk I witness the French snow removal system: one man with a leaf blower blowing the snow to the side while two men behind him look idly on and cast a mixture of salt and sand behind the first man. Thankfully for me, the man with the leaf blower let his machine idle as I approached. Unfortunately this did not save me from being covered in a fine sheen of snow crystals. I did the French thing: said "bonjour" and kept going.
The path from the tram stop at Faculté to the building where my oral French class is proved to be even more of a hassle than getting to the tram itself, for between the two lies a three minute walk.
Normally I enjoy this walk because it lets me fall into step alongside French students and forget eavesdrop a little before classes start, little snippets of clothes, dates, and classwork. Today that walk was covered in snow packed so tightly by students having stepped over it for the past few hours that it was now basically ice. I was forced to once again carefully make my way and pray that I wouldn't misstep - only this time I had to do all this in the presence of other students.
I'm not going to lie, I almost slipped and fell about fifteen times and at one point I may or may not have been making sure I was in tread with a sturdy-looking Frenchman just in case I happened to lose my footing so I could grab onto him and prevent myself from completely embarrasing myself.
The entire time I was doing all this a blush began to stain my cheeks. I like to think that if anyone happened to notice they would think it only a response to the cold. That blush changed from one of embarrassment to one of delight when I dared to look back and noticed several French students almost losing their footing. Suddenly all those times I had almost fallen seemed worth it just to be able to see others with the same predicament.
And then all thoughts of snow and Richmond lost my mind as I realized something: I was not alone.
Snow.
I've been hearing about snow in Richmond for the past two weeks as it has come to my inbox and exploded on my FB and Twitter feeds. And with each new announcement I have grown steadily more and more depressed at actually missing the one winter when it snows at home. So waking to it this morning actually made me smile, even if the accumulation here was less than half an inch.
That smile quickly slipped from my face two hours later as I tried to make my way from my dorm to the tram stop in my no-tread Chucks. In the middle of my careful path down the sidewalk I witness the French snow removal system: one man with a leaf blower blowing the snow to the side while two men behind him look idly on and cast a mixture of salt and sand behind the first man. Thankfully for me, the man with the leaf blower let his machine idle as I approached. Unfortunately this did not save me from being covered in a fine sheen of snow crystals. I did the French thing: said "bonjour" and kept going.
The path from the tram stop at Faculté to the building where my oral French class is proved to be even more of a hassle than getting to the tram itself, for between the two lies a three minute walk.
Normally I enjoy this walk because it lets me fall into step alongside French students and forget eavesdrop a little before classes start, little snippets of clothes, dates, and classwork. Today that walk was covered in snow packed so tightly by students having stepped over it for the past few hours that it was now basically ice. I was forced to once again carefully make my way and pray that I wouldn't misstep - only this time I had to do all this in the presence of other students.
I'm not going to lie, I almost slipped and fell about fifteen times and at one point I may or may not have been making sure I was in tread with a sturdy-looking Frenchman just in case I happened to lose my footing so I could grab onto him and prevent myself from completely embarrasing myself.
The entire time I was doing all this a blush began to stain my cheeks. I like to think that if anyone happened to notice they would think it only a response to the cold. That blush changed from one of embarrassment to one of delight when I dared to look back and noticed several French students almost losing their footing. Suddenly all those times I had almost fallen seemed worth it just to be able to see others with the same predicament.
And then all thoughts of snow and Richmond lost my mind as I realized something: I was not alone.
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