Winter is coming (already)

One aspect of living in a the Loire valley that I had not anticipated is, well, that it is a river valley.  The fog rises off the river in the mornings like it wishes it was in an Edgar Allen Poe story.  Sometimes, I get up an look out my window and this (exhibit A >>)  is all I can see out my window.  It is beautiful, but quite spooky, and I am glad I am not out driving in it.

Other mornings, like this one, the sun is shining brightly high in the sky, but the fog lies low in the pockets of the rolling countryside, covering the fields and spinnies in a bluish muffler.  I spent the night in Nevers last night with Aurelie, and as we were driving the thirty-five minutes it takes to get to Cosne on the highway, we kept going over miniature rises and coming upon unexpected reservoirs of fog lingering before the sun's rays became too bright.

The downside of a sunny day, though--and it has become a very sunny one, post 10am--is that it is freezing.  Aurelie had to scrape the ice of her car before we could leave this morning.  After a week or so of summery weather when I first got here, the last two weeks have skipped fall and taken us directly to winter, complete with cold, damp, and wind.  The heat was not on in the school last week, which meant that the conversation in the staff room consisted of a lot of people sitting in their coats saying, "Merde, il fait froid!" to each other in various stages of outrage.  Fortunately, they turned on the heat in the personal apartments over the weekend, and as of today, it is finally on all over the building, so it is much more comfortable inside at least.