Snow Day

The unimaginable just happened: Barcelona had a Snow Day.

According to my student Ander, he only had a half-day of school today due to the impending BLIZZARD. That's right. A blizzard of snow is doomed to hit Barcelona any minute now....

Yeah right.

But seriously, his school did cancel the rest of the day today (and possibly tomorrow as well), and many of my other students also canceled class today for fear of being snowed in at work. Apparently, two years ago, Barcelona actually did have quite a fair amount of snow hit the city, and of course, the city completely shut down. Public transportation and other traffic completely stopped. Students barely made it home from school, some teachers had to sleep in classrooms, and other people were forced to spend the night at their offices. (Of course, this is similar to what happens in southern States back home; cities which are not accustomed to snowy weather are therefore not prepared for any amount of snowfall. Thus what Mid-Westerners would call a sprinkle of light snow suddenly becomes an avalanche of death in warmer climates. Needless to say, I had to hold back a lot of eye rolling while talking to my Spanish students about how it actually snows A LOT in Barcelona and other parts of Spain. Again, yeah right. Try living in this "avalanche of death" for 4 months!).

And so the memory of that catastrophe not two years before remains ingrained in Spaniards' minds such that any news of potential snow drifts causes them to take preemptive Snow Day action. And it did turn out to be true; the suburbs of Barcelona did see a few inches of snow. However, the actual city only saw a few pieces of hail in the night (which my Spanish roommates were kind enough to get me out of bed to see so that I could share in the excitement of all of this "snow').

But in the end, I was able to calm my students down by suggesting a field trip to Wisconsin next January. That helped them get some perspective.