{"id":5214,"date":"2013-03-10T04:21:33","date_gmt":"2013-03-10T11:21:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oldblogs.ups.edu\/studyingabroad\/?p=5214"},"modified":"2013-04-01T08:10:41","modified_gmt":"2013-04-01T15:10:41","slug":"lessons-learned-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/2013\/03\/10\/lessons-learned-or-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Lesson Learned…or Not. In which our heroine has multiple unfortunate encounters with snowdrifts, while riding her trusty two-wheeled steed."},"content":{"rendered":"

According the the Ostsee Zeitung, last month was unprecedentedly cold, dark, and sunless.\u00a0 We were granted about 27 hours of sunlight in 28 days.\u00a0 Ugh.\u00a0 No wonder there is a plethora of sun lamps up here.\u00a0 Greifswald spent almost all of December, January, and February under snow.\u00a0 Once in\u00a0 a while, there would be a couple warmer days, and then Greifswald would be very slushy.\u00a0 Last week, however, we saw the sun<\/em>, for days<\/em>, and the last vestiges of our snow blanket melted.\u00a0 We sat outside, on our balcony, sipping tea and soaking up the sunshine.\u00a0 When someone told me it was going to snow this weekend, I wanted to cry.\u00a0 I wanted to beg, please, no!\u00a0 Not more snow!\u00a0 Let the sun stay!<\/p>\n

Yesterday was a prelude to what would come.\u00a0 Yesterday, the wind was icy, and the sky overcast all day.\u00a0 I woke up this morning to a once-again snow-covered city.\u00a0 It snowed almost six inches overnight, The awful thing about Greifswald’s weather is the wind.\u00a0 There is always<\/em> wind, and it turns even nice, sunny days, chilly.\u00a0 When there is rain or snow, it worse.\u00a0 The wind is very strong, and sends thousands of tiny, icy needles into our faces.\u00a0 Even if it is not actively snowing, the wind picks up snow lying on the ground, and flings it into us poor mortals.\u00a0 Today, it was only ~24 miles\/hr.\u00a0 I wanted nothing more, this morning, than to stay warm and dry, curled up in bed and maybe reading a good book.\u00a0 However, on most Sunday mornings, I volunteer at a local animal shelter, and I knew they would need my help today, even more than usual, because of the weather.<\/p>\n

Reluctantly, I dragged myself into semi-awake state.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

This is Lucifer. Despite the name, he is an absolute sweetie. He is not quite a year old, and a little bit shy, but he loves to cuddle.<\/p><\/div>\n

The bike ride to the animal shelter is usually only 10 minutes, very easy.\u00a0 However, at 8:45 am Sunday morning, the sidewalks and bike lines were not yet cleared of snow.\u00a0 I hesitantly pedaled out into the street, finding it only marginally easier to navigate.\u00a0 Each driver was being exceedingly cautious, because of the snow, so they were driving only slighter faster than I was biking.\u00a0 Keeping my bike going straight was probably the hardest, and scariest part of the bike ride, because I never knew if the snow would slip beneath my tires, and send me sprawling in front of a car.\u00a0 Eventually, I came to a busier street, and the sidewalks were partially cleared, so I moved over and onto them.\u00a0 As I had feared, I did indeed fall, although thankfully not in front of a car (and they were going so slowly, I probably would not have been hit).\u00a0 In total, I fell 5 times; 3 times on the way to the animal shelter, and twice on the way back.\u00a0 One time, my bike just sort of stopped going forward<\/em>, because the snow was too deep.\u00a0 I suppose one could either applaud my perseverance, or criticize my inability to learn that biking in snow is not feasible.\u00a0 I am just glad to be inside, again, chugging hot tea, and telling you all about my morning.\u00a0 The snow made it a lot more exciting of a morning than it would have been, otherwise!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According the the Ostsee Zeitung, last month was unprecedentedly cold, dark, and sunless.\u00a0 We were granted about 27 hours of sunlight in 28 days.\u00a0 Ugh.\u00a0 No wonder there is a plethora of sun lamps up here.\u00a0 Greifswald spent almost all … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kat-schmidt-12-germany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5214"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5254,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5214\/revisions\/5254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}