Winter Approaches

Winter approaches and I realize that I'm going to be able to skip it again for an entire year, a luxury. Our timeline for returning should be finalized by the end of this week (though I've been saying this for 4 weeks now!) and chances are likely that we will be back in San Francisco by no later than the second week in June. When we moved to Australia in the last week of August in 2008, I had no concept of what living without winter for an entire year would be like - and by living without winter I don't mean cold weather, but day light hours. When we first arrived, there wasn't a huge difference between the hours in a day between Sydney and San Francisco - we were coming out of the end of summer and going into the end of winter. It was quite a magical experience to have waning days turn into waxing ones in the blink of an eye. My mind played tricks on me the entire first year and I could never really grasp what season we were actually in. After going through a few cycles, I'm now used to it, however there are months that I still get a little confused on the season, April/May and September/October being those times because of the equilibrium of day light hours between autumn and spring. This is compounded by the fact that most of the people I know live somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere and are constantly posting on Facebook during late spring or autumn, "Summer is around the corner!" or "Ugh, winter is upon us." It is easy to forget where I am and go with what I know, rather, have known. The difference this time around is that all of my friends' clamor back home about summer being around the corner is true.