Weather is relative

It's January in Abu Dhabi, and there is no better time to separate the locals from the visitors. Let's start with the tourists, fewer in number this year, but highly visible despite the worldwide economic woe. They stroll the Corniche in their flowy cotton pants and tunic tops, sunglasses perched on heads, hair blowing in the breeze. They go to the beach and cruise the malls. They smile at the sun. They work on their tans, perhaps daydreaming of the envious looks and comments they will surely receive upon their return to Berlin, Paris or Moscow.

Meanwhile, the residents of this fair city have busted out their wool caps and puffy jackets. My building's maintenance man cuts a fine figure every morning as he walks around the park with a scarf wrapped around his head and tied snugly under his chin with his ever-present skull cap perched on top of the whole ensemble. He's not the only one. To people who have lived through summer here, it most definitely feels like winter. The sun's heat warms rather than sears. The breeze blows rather than whispers or caresses. There are often actual clouds that block the sunlight for more than a few seconds at a time. While it hasn't gone so far as to rain, it sometimes looks as if it might. People all over the city are turning off the A/C and leaving it off. Often for days at a time. Relatively speaking, it's freezing around here.

Having just experienced real winter in NYC, I'm less inclined to shiver, especially since I am still wearing short sleeves to work. But I can see how blood can thin into nothingness in a climate like this. Today I had a 5-minute discussion with one of my classes about what a furnace was. Kids who knew were trying to explain to kids who didn't. (And lest you think this is an Arabian Peninsula thing, a 100% American girl from Texas was the first kid to own up to not knowing.)

The conversation went like this:

Kid #1: A furnace is like a heater.

100% Texan: Like a radiator?

Kid #2: No, no...like a heating system--a furnace is the main part of it.

Dutch kid who has lived in the UAE most of her life: I know what a radiator is.

Kid #1: No, it's not a radiator--it's a thing that controls the heat.

Kid #2 (waving his hand frantically in the air): Like an air conditioner, only heat instead.

Texan: It blows hot air around?

Kid #3 (jumping in before Kid #2 can answer): Yeah! Yeah! And it's in a basement.

Palestinian kid: Why?

Kid #3: I don't know!

Palestinian kid: I think it sounds like a radiator.

Kid #3: Nooo! Have you ever seen "Home Alone?"

All kids: Yes, of course/Duh/Who hasn't?/Naturally

Kid #3: It's that thing down in the basement that he's afraid of that has fire in it. That's a furnace.

Most kids: Oh! Now I get it!

Kid from Ohio who has lived in the UAE all of his life: Do you shovel coal into it?

Kid #3 (now viewed as the class expert on central-heating apparati): It sucks in air and makes it hotter, then spits it out again.

Dutch kid: Like a radiator.

Me: OK, moving on...

The kids don't know I write a blog, but I did warn them I was going to tell everyone at home about how such brilliant kids--really amazing students who have been privileged to travel the world, speak multiple languages and experience more in 12 years than most people do in 50--do not know what a furnace is. (The Palestinian kid said, "At least tell them we know what radiators are cause it's kinda the same thing." At this point, feel free to imagine Kid #3 piping up "No, it's not!" in a Monty Python punchline voice and me lassoing everyone back on topic once again.)

So, what is the moral of the story? 1) My students DO know what a radiator is, 2) weather is relative, 3) "Home Alone" is a movie whose cultural relevancy is not yet exhausted and 4) the people of Abu Dhabi, myself included, are shivering and smiling in the warm, gentle January sun.