and then one day it was fall... or so i thought

I can’t tell you exactly when, but I distinctly remember waking up one day and realizing that it was actually cold outside and I wanted to wear more than just the shorts and a tank top that I had grown accustomed to. Within the next 24 hours I was wearing jeans, tennis shoes, a tank top, long sleeve shirt, and my fleece jacket to class wondering how it got so cold so fast. At night I got into my down sleeping bag built for 20 degree weather that I had wanted to burn my first month or so here. The funny thing was, it was really only about 60 degrees outside by nightfall but the humidity made it feel like it was 40 degrees and the houses have no insulation. A few days into this strange cold spell, on my walk to the bus stop I had gloves on and zipped my jacket all the way up with my hood on, over the layers underneath. After 20 minutes of brisk walking I was finally feeling ready to take off the gloves and unzip the jacket a bit, but like I said, only after 20 minutes of brisk walking. I felt ridiculous knowing from the temperature on my clock that it was just 63 degrees, but I didn’t feel like I had enough clothes to bundle up in. I wasn’t the only one, and suddenly other trainees were wearing clothes none of us had seen before that had been buried at the bottoms of suitcases for the past two months. While it was kind of nice to have cool weather instead of the normal 90 degree humid heat that makes you want to soak in an ice bath all day, I was so cold I halfway started wishing for the heat again and started wondering how I would survive the winter if it was that cold or got any colder. (I’m pretty sure some of you have experienced me complaining about cold weather and suddenly getting grumpy when I’m not in a warm, comfortable temperature.)
The bitter cold lasted for about a week and then it was just nice and cool, almost normal California weather for a while. I was really enjoying waking up and drinking hot mate every morning and not having to endure painfully cold showers or feel like I had to wring my clothes out when I changed because I had sweated so much. I was thinking I could really get used to it and had almost forgotten about the stifling heat and then it slowly got warmer until the other day I realized it was just too hot to be wearing long pants. (Ok, maybe by slowly, I mean in two days it got hot again.) The last few days, about 9 at night the temperature will finally drop below 90. (And by drop I mean it stays around 87 all night, maybe 84 when I wake up if I’m lucky.) And don’t forget the humidity factor that makes it feel 5 to 10 degrees warmer than it really us… So much for cool fall weather. I have been told that I have a very cold winter to look forward to, and when I say look forward I mean I’m kind of dreading it, but I think for a couple more months it will bounce back and forth like those good old California springs and falls, just with more extreme temperature changes. It looks like I’ll wake up one day and be sweating before 8 o’clock and a week later seeing how many days I can go before my family tells me to shower because I don’t want to endure the painfully cold water. Winter, here I come.