Weather/Heat

So I have been trying to explain the heat situation all week to everyone back home. I will try again with some video and pictures in this blog.

Everyone keeps saying, "At least it's not 0 degrees there!" and although it is not 0 degrees here, it is not "warm" like everyone seems to think. The high temperature since I have been here has been around 63 degrees. At night, the temperature gets down to around 30-40 degrees. Mexico City is in the middle of the country and has a very high elevation. (We are four hours from any coastline.) Where we live, Sayavedra is even higher into the mountains than Mexico City, so I am guessing that we are a few degrees cooler than the temperature there.

So, yes, the temperature outside isn't awful. It would be like a cool spring day, but it is not the outside weather that matters, it is the temperature inside.

Our house has very spacious rooms, marble tile floor, many windows and the floor plan (that you'll see from the video) is completely open. In other words, there are no "floors", but instead you can see all the way to the top of the house from the lowest point in the house.

The way they heat homes here is very minimal. They don't have furnaces, or at least we don't have one. We have two gas fireplace/stoves, some electric wall units, and other radiator units spread throughout the house. Some of these are not even worth turning on as it is futile to try to heat the house with them. We also turn the gas stoves off at night because we do not want to waste the propane or let them run nonstop.

The average temperature in the room where the gas stove is runs from 17-19 degrees Celsius which is equivalent to 62-66 degrees Fahrenheit. I am not sure the temperature of the rest of the house because there are no thermostats, but this room is the most closed off compared to the rest of the house, and therefore, I am guessing gets the warmest. Most homes (well, at least mine) keep there thermostats at 68 degrees on average and when I am cold, I kick it up to 70. Here it can take the entire day (or at least morning) to get to 66 degrees inside. I must also mention that there are no heaters in the bathrooms, which makes it very difficult to get out of the shower!

So, as I am not trying to complain, but rather explain why it (or at least I) am so cold and can't seem to get rid of my darn runny/stuffy nose. In Michigan, I hated going outside because it's so cold, but here I hate going outside because when you come in, you can't warm up! January is the coldest month on average and I do hope that when it gets warmer, the house will also warm up, but for right now, I just feel like I am on a never ending, bad camping trip (and I hate camping)! I hope I explained this a little better, but I also hope that I haven't deterred anyone from coming to visit us! It's got to warm up soon! :)