Moscow, and Russia for that matter, is usually associated with cold weather, blizzards, big furry hats and overcoats. That’s for a good reason. In the winter the temperature will stay below freezing for months. Sometimes it’s so cold they feed vodka to the animals at the zoo to keep them warm. Seriously, I’m not kidding, check this out.
All that to say I can hardly remember what “cold” feels like. Is cold that momentary chill you get when you eat ice cream? Are goose bumps the greatest measurement for extreme cold? “Cold” is such an elusive thought to me that I shudder when I see people wearing parkas on TV and get a little sick to my stomach when I see all of our sweaters and heavy coats and scarfs. “Why do I have these?” I ask myself.
You see the reason why I cannot contemplate cold right now is that it has been in the high 90s and 100s for weeks. It’s been the hottest summer in Moscow for 130 years, July was the hottest it’s EVER been in Moscow. The day after our teammates Chris & Liz arrived with their 3 month old baby it was the hottest day in the recorded history of Moscow. Moscow is an 850 year old city! That’s hot.When we were looking for apartments in December one option had a place to put up an air conditioner. We both scoffed at the idea of an air conditioner in Moscow. “What’s the need?” we said, “it’s hot for like a week and we lived in New Orleans, we can handle it.” Hindsight is always better than foresight as they say.
In case you haven’t guessed yet we don’t have air conditioning. All we have is a ten dollar fan we bought this spring that is now selling for $100 due to the demand. Gotta love capitalism.To keep cool we’ve developed an elaborate system of propping our fan and opening and closing windows at different times of the day to keep the heat out and let the cool in. We’ve also learned of the magic of cold baths. It is a very strange feeling to get out of a cold bath and then put on hot underwear, and I don't mean "Oh, yeah" hot, I mean underwear that is literally at a higher temperature than your body. That's weird.
The heat was uncomfortable but bearable, but the smoke was a whole ‘nother deal. Because of the heat and lack of rain not only in Moscow but throughout western Russia the forests surrounding Moscow and the countryside have become a tinder box waiting to explode. It was only a matter of time before fires began to spread uncontrollably. Last week at one point there were more than 500 uncontained forest fires raging in Russia. That number has been reduced but it’s still a national emergency that will take weeks to put out. All the smoke from the fires southeast and southwest of Moscow has blown straight towards the city and has stayed there due to the cities propensity to trap heat. In short it’s been hot and smoky. At one point the smoke was so thick and toxic that the air pollution was more than 5 times the allowable limit. That meant we couldn’t open our windows to let a breeze come through or go for a walk to cool down. That meant it was hot and stinky in our home. We would sweat by just sitting down and reading.
Thank God that we have some great friends with a spacious apartment and air conditioning. For three days we would come over in the early afternoon and play games, watch movies or just visit. All in an effort to escape the heat and stuffiness of our own apartments. I don’t know what we would have done without those friends.
Many of our friends and family received an e-mail from us asking them to pray and sure enough a day or two later the smoke blew away and the heat came down a little bit. As I write this the sky is a bright blue and it’s a comfortable 84 F outside. There are reports of big clouds of smoke coming our way but until then we’ll play outside, open our windows and thank God for small mercies.
One last thought on all this. One day as I was drawing an ice bath in hopes of cooling down I had nothing else to do but watch the clear, clean water pour out of bath spigot into my bath tub. That’s when this question hit me “How many people in the world have never had clean water in the comfort of their own home? God, thank you for clean water, thank you for a comfortable home, thank you for this.” A little perspective has gone a long way for us here in Moscow. Thanks for your prayers and we’ll keep you posted on what’s going on.
Gratefully,
Dave & Jess
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