Temperature Extremes

I'm back in Utah now, and it's been hot. Really hot. The fact that my recently-purchased car doesn't have working a/c only adds to the misery.

And every day, I think to myself, "I'm so glad that I'm not in the Middle East anymore!"

When I lived in Jordan, it was HOT. I slept with the fan on full blast pointed at my face all night, and the lack of air conditioning everywhere made things miserable. 

When I lived in Taiwan, it was HOT in the summer. I was riding my bike several hours a day and sitting in hot houses and dripping sweat like there was no tomorrow. But I always had an air conditioning unit in my room, which was a lifesaver. In the winter, it was COLD. The only heaters we had were small non-blowing space heaters, and everything was made of tile. And everything was WET all the time. It rained all the time, so my shoes, my clothes, my hair, my body, my floor--everything was just wet and cold.

Because of my two prior experiences abroad, I thought I would be fine in a non-insulated, non-heated/air conditioned apartment in the West Bank.

But I thought wrong.

I was shocked at the temperature extremes I experienced this past year. Remember my apartment? The small thing with 15-foot high ceilings, no insulation, and a tile floor? The first night I moved in, I looked at the bedspread on the bed and thought, "I'd rather not touch that until I wash it." Plus, I never ever sleep under the covers, Often in the winters in Utah I open my window at night because I get too hot with my blanket on (because of the heaters).

So I laid a sheet down and laid on top of the heavy covers. Finally, about 2:30 am and after waking up at least every 30 minutes shivering, I thought to myself, "I am really going to die. There is no way I am making it through the night. They will have to drag my frozen body away when they find it in a few days, because I am freezing to death." I finally realized that I could put an end to all this suffering and sleep under the covers. It was such a novel idea to me that I hadn't even thought about it before. 

But that's how cold it was. Remember the distance from my couch to the stove?

During the winter I had a small, non-blowing space heater (the kind that gives you second-degree burns on your left leg as your right leg still has ice encrusted to it) placed next to my legs as I sat on the couch. And it was so cold that most nights I didn't want to leave the heater and walk over to the stove because my jean-clad legs would freeze on the way there. Each night I boiled water for my hot water bottle. I would walk over to the sink, fill up the pot, put it on the stove, and walk (run) back over to the heater. When the water started boiling, I would pour it in my hot water bottle and run it to my bed (to warm it up) and then run back to the heater. And that was about all the time I spent away from the heater until I went to bed. 

It was so cold that some mornings I woke up with burns on my arm from the rubber hot water bottle. And I had still been freezing during the night (even sleeping under the heavy covers!!).

My sister, standing by the gas stove trying to get warm after the electricity went out

My one consolation was that since my apartment was 10 degrees colder than the outside air (more when it rained) in the winter, it HAD to be cool in the summer.

Good thing I didn't know the truth, or I might not have survived the winter. After the customary 3 weeks in March of pleasant weather, where everything turns green and blooms and it looks like a beautiful country, the weather started getting HOT. And I found out about an unhappy reality: my apartment was 10 degrees hotter than the outside air in the summer (more when the sun was shining).

Although most Arab homes and apartments are built without air conditioning (at least in the West Bank and Jordan--electricity is way too expensive and Bedouin are used to living in tents anyway, right?), they usually put the windows in a way that creates an air tunnel (to air your house out and allow a breeze to blow through). Not so with my apartment. The three windows were placed in three different rooms with little opportunity for air flow.

It was so hot that I removed everything but a thin sheet from my mattress so that my body didn't have to come into contact with more fabric than necessary. It was so hot that I would sit on my couch with the fan pointed straight at me and would rarely leave, even to walk over to the fridge to get something to eat, because I would start dripping sweat as soon as I walked away from the fan. 

It was so hot that I would wake up several times a night, go to the sink, and dump cold water all over my body to try and cool off. Sometimes I just cried because I was so hot. And the tears were hot, too. It was so hot that one day I scraped all the ice out of my freezer and rubbed it all over my body. And then went and sat by the fan.

I think you get my point. It was SO COLD in the winter and SO HOT in the summer. Thank goodness my car doesn't have a/c so I don't miss the heat too much...