Arrival of the First Snow

This morning I awoke to the sound of children laughing and playing outside and when I turned over and opened my eyes, I could see the white light from outside shining through my window. Snow! I knew it before I opened my window and peered outside at the white surroundings.

 My host mom said that two hours before there had been no snow, and so the layer of white powder had fallen since then and was still coming down. The thermometer read -2.9 degrees celsius, so it was below freezing outside.

 Being a Friday, I have my Rotary meetings in town, so I put some long underwear under my jeans, and put on my big snow coat, scarf, gloves and hat, and headed outside to the bus stop. It wasn't too cold, despite being kind of windy.

 There wasn't anyone else waiting at the bus stop, but I still saw a few people out walking their dogs and even riding their bikes.  While on the bus, we passed by a car that had driven off the road and into the trees.  In Finland it's illegal to not have winter tires, but not everyone has changed from their summer tires yet, so accidents like these are common when the season of snow first begins.

Today's Rotary meeting was very nice and we had the Lithuanian Ambassador there (last week was the ambassador for Latvia, and the week before that for Belarus).  Afterwards I walked a bit with my club counslor and just walking around you could see that most of the snow had turned to slush.  This time of year the snow comes, but usually goes away.  Looking at all the slush makes me think of how tomorrow the sidewalks will be ice skating rinks after tonight.

While I waited for the bus, I took some pictures of the square.  Despite the snow, people were still out and about going on with their lives. 

I took my usual longer route from the bus stop and passed through some nice snow covered streets.  I really love how snow looks on everything, and how the sky was so beautiful with the clouds and blue spots.  The good thing is that everything is much lighter with the snow, which is in some ways compensation for the darkness that has been creeping in lately.

There's our house at the end of the street covered in snow.

It's now 7:30pm and very dark outside, but the snow has continued to stick on the ground. We may get more tomorrow and into the night, but it's hard to know, so we'll just have to see how it goes.

Winter is coming! Or maybe it's here. Snow in October; such a nice surprise.