Living Without

The June Gloom is definitely gone and it has been 90 degrees for the past three days. I'm sure that there is some reason, yet to be revealed, why I need to discover all the ways to stay somewhat cool on the 5th floor of an apartment building with no air conditioning. No air conditioning is really the normal way of things in Europe so I am not surprised, but I am challenged to deal with the feeling that at any moment I might become a melted puddle on the floor. I should have known we'd be in trouble with excess heat in the summer, when we hardly had to turn any heat on in the winter. The hottest part of the day (between 4-7 p.m.) is when the sun is directly on our front window. This makes it necessary to roll down the outside shade but when I do that, no air is able to come in. We do have fans--thankfully, and have found that if we don't turn on any lights at night then the bugs don't come in our screen-less windows. At least there is usually a pretty good breeze coming through either the front or the back windows. We've found that the newer buses have air conditioning, but the older ones do not. I told Steve on Sunday on our way home from church that I would rather walk all the way than get on a crowded, non-air conditioned bus again.

Lest I sound ungrateful for all of our wonderful experiences, let me clarify that I am merely challenged to learn new ways to handle living without some things which we sometimes take for granted. What is interesting to me is that so far I have been successful in adapting. An "Old Dog" can learn new tricks.

Our pictures from this weekend in Luzern are on Steve's lap top which is with him in Boston. It has crashed, so we hope that all the pictures were not lost.

Love to you all,
Mary