More on le mistral

Now that it's 10 degrees colder in the South of France than in my old northern stomping grounds, there's heat on in the school, and I got my shoes soaked through by the rain last night, can I complain about the weather?

I don't really want to complain. In a confusing, unfamiliar way, I think it feels like fall. When I walked out my door this morning to go to the (open-air) market, it felt even wintery. You know those bright winter days we have in NH, where the sky such a clear, icy blue and the air is so dry, and there's nothing stopping the sun from shining, but you can tell just by looking at the sky and the way the light falls that it's winter? It felt like that. Except, I must be losing my grip on reality, because it's really not cold at all. The wind can be fierce, as it is today, but it isn't needles to the face so much as chaos in the air. And when the wind stops, the air is gentle.

It's not swimming weather, but it's not bad. It is weird, though. It's weird to go out in the evening, at 6pm, when it's already dark, so it feels like winter is coming, and yet... by day there are palm trees, so it looks like summer. There's a strange cognitive dissonance going on. I am curious to see how it will feel to have a winter without snow. I'm guessing that I will be tricked into feeling normal. After all, we wouldn't want to subject even weather to ethnocentrism.