It's cold outside...

Although the town has been covered by a blanket of snow for some time now, today was just about the first time that it felt really cold, the type of cold that literally does get into your bones and starts to freeze the end of your nose. As I write, it's a decidedly frosty -17°C outside, -25°C with windchill, which is quite cold enough thank you, but I've been here long enough now to know that it's going to get a lot colder than that in the months ahead.

However, it was also beautifully sunny today, and the view out onto the Bay really was rather stunning. Now, I vowed to myself when I started this blog that it wouldn't turn into yet another amateur travelogue, full of endless photos of the landscape which, after a while, all merge into one however beautiful they are. But today I feel the need to indulge myself and share with you a few photos that I took either at, or on the way to, school (click to enlarge):

The view from my classroom

Hudson Bay, as seen from the school

Smoke on the water...(go on, you know you want to!)

The last photo - not the best quality as it was literally taken through my classroom window - shows the phenomenon of sea smoke, or steam devils, caused when warmer air covers colder waters and winds are calm. The locals view this as a sign that the freeze has really begun, and if there's one thing I've learned to trust in my time here, it's local knowledge when it comes to the weather.

Finally, since I started writing, the temperature has dropped to -20°C (-28°C with windchill), so not only does this illustrate what I was just saying about local knowledge regarding the weather, it also means that it's time to break open the hot chocolate and marshmallows (the little, hot chocolate mug variety). Night, night.