Winter has arrived

Up until this week, the weather had been quite good.  We definitely had some cold days, and times when the wind was quite strong, but overall it was pretty nice.  On Sunday night it snowed, and was incredibly windy.  Like 'able to hear the wind no matter where you are in the apartment' kind of windy.  Monday morning started like this:

The courtyard was calm, but the rest of the city ended up being completely chaotic.  It took until 10am for all of the school buses to arrive at school - one even broke down on the way.  Mine was about 25 minutes late.  The roads were a complete mess - super slippery, covered in snow and slush, and still littered with crazy people trying to cross 6 lanes of even-less-controlled traffic.  Wednesday was even colder, and in the morning I experienced a "oh yeah, winter" moment reminiscent of winter wind in Thunder Bay.  It snowed again Wednesday afternoon/evening - pretty, fluffy, snow this time, and I was ready for today to be a snow day.  

What actually gets me (besides reminding me why I moved to the only city in Canada that doesn't get winter) is how un-well winter was dealt with.  It was Wednesday before salt got put down in any public places (and soooo needed, given that there isn't a single even flat surface here) and I still don't think any of the roads have been cleared.  They can apparently building buildings in days, entire highways and overpasses in 2 months, but they can't deal with a few centimeters of snow.  Oh....China.