The weather is shifting radically. It was around -20°C a few days ago and is 0°C today. I have no idea what it will be tomorrow; it's quite unpredictable.

Sunlight is pretty rare in winters here. The Sun is reliably up at around 8 AM and is down before 6 PM. Many days are clouded, as well, which creates a blandly and depressingly grey sky. This makes me want to live somewhere sunny, like South of France. A British exchange student here at TSU once commented that she came to be quite depressed at one point because she wasn't seeing the Sun for three days straight. Interestingly, when the sky is clear, it's all bloody gorgeous.

I live an hour of walk / 20 mins of public transportation from the university, more or less due to road traffic. I got lucky because the apartment I rent is quite near a bus stop that connects trolleybuses with the main street, the Lenina street (named after Vladimir Lenin, as are most of the main streets and prospects in Russia; the way the Russian language expresses various categories or aspects of words is declining words, so if you want to say "the street of Lenin's", you say "ulitsa Lenina"). The Lenina street is where the university stands. Had I to rent an apartment even a few blocks to the south, and the bus stop would become of unreliable access (it would have been a steep uphill), and I'd have to spend 35 mins instead, going all around the city.

I have no idea whether it will close due to weather. I can't remember whether the KemSU - the university of Kemerovo which I first attended - ever did. Schools do, especially for those of lower forms: I believe it's closed for those of the seventh form and lower if it's -30°C, ninth and lower if it's -35 and for all school levels if its -40 or lower. At least that's what we in Siberia had. I hear that Moscow - which doesn't have any sort of such cold winters - has its school closed at -10°C, which I find utterly ridiculous.

I don't know how the wooden houses are heated - and yes, Tomsk still has wooden houses all over itself - but most of the houses use central heating, like, you know, most of the developed world. Some houses - particularly the dachas - use oven heating by the way of burning firewood; those of quality provide quite some heating, enough to feel completely at ease - I have a dacha with such an oven and I've been there during the colder days - and, it can be used for cooking!