*663 - hotel de glace

So, my first reaction to stepping out onto Ithaca grounds was to twirl across the VP carpark singing "WHEEE what lovely, warm weather!" And seeing that we are in the pits of a snowy, cruel Ithacan winter, this means that Quebec was No Joke At All.

Another thing that is No Joke At All is the fact that I left on Friday after class and just reached home, and I have a full day of classes tomorrow that begins at 8.40, with projects and assignments due on Tuesday.

That said, Quebec was delightful and Hotel de Glace was jaw-droppingly amazing. Imagine: a hotel carved out of ice which lasts 3 months in a year and is different every time. Ice chairs and ice cups and ice chandeliers and ice bars.

Also imagine: open-air hot tubs, where the weather is below -30, so your body's warm and happy and pruney from being in the water for so long but your hair above the water crystallizes into a shiny, white ice sculpture. And imagine: all of us scuttling barefoot in the open in our underwear (some clever ones brought trunks/bathing suits but the rest of us were woefully unprepared), with the soles of our feet sticking to the ice, wet bodies turning into ice blocks, and then plunging madly into the hot tubs or running screaming into the sauna.

Sleeping in ice rooms on ice beds (with a mattress and sleeping bag) was not fun, though. The boys seemed to generate heat a lot better than the girls so they survived through the night. I slept 3 hours, woke up shivering wildly with the sleeping bag around my head encrusted with ice, struggled for half an hour to ignore the cold, gave up and dove into iced clothing, and sprinted to the bathroom to blast a hairdryer at my face and another at my feet.

It was a strange, and painful, and wonderful experience.