albania--coldest place on earth

Albania—coldest and wettest country on the planet. The actual degrees are not so terrible; it's inside the houses where your bones are freezing. Understand that the builders and architects of the homes here must have been, and are, stubborn. They refuse to admit that they need to insulate their homes or have central heating. The walls are about a foot thick with solid concrete with an R value of negative 6.
What ends up happening is that we dash from one room with the space heater, freeze our butts off in the hallway or on the steps and dive into the next room with a space heater. The point is that the core body never warms up. The result is that even when I grew up in Iowa, and more recently in Kazakhstan, where ice will hang around in below freezing weather for 2 weeks in a row, I was not as cold as I have been here. The hidden blessing? We are doing our part for the conservation of world-wide energy. We also don’t waste energy using the water heater much. We don't take showers but once a week because the air in the house is so frigid. I’d rather just stay filthy. I guess this is a way of preparing ourselves for life after Armageddon brought on by World War III and the ensuing thermonuclear winter. .

Not only is this the coldest place on earth, it is the wettest. One day last week, I walked to school at 7:30 thinking that we would finally enjoy a day of sunshine after 13 days of uninterrupted cloudiness.  Not more than 10 minutes after I had remarked to myself how beautiful the weather was, it clouded up and the rain began. The kids are supposed to stay in the playground area before the bell rings at 7:55. We use that time to get the day prepared and to have a bit of a breather. This day, since it was already raining like dogs spitting at cats, all the kids had to stay in the classroom, throwing paper airplanes.

Last Saturday, we had our first snow since we have been here. In the morning, huge, wet flakes meandered their way slowly throw the atmosphere. They melted immediately upon contact.

Then, on Sunday, we had some of the strangest weather imaginable. As we were lying in bed, I heard what I thought was hail banging on the roof. Ten minutes later, when I got out of bed and looked out the window I saw, not rain or clouds, but bright blue sky. When we opened the door to go to church, the ground had several pieces of ice. When we made it to the car, the windshield had 6 inches of slush on top of the wipers. Because I was living as a sleep-deprived individual, and would probably fall asleep in church, I stayed in the car. While there, thunder, lightning, sleet and hail alternated with clear, blue sky, as all manner of weather cycled through twice in 20 minutes.