Hardship Pay

I know that I have been slightly "wussified" by living in Seattle for three years. The weather there is really mild and rarely gets below freezing. Since I have arrived in Latvia I have been really cold. So cold that I even went and bought gloves with the fingers tips missing to keep my hands slightly warmer when I am reading. A

t first I thought it was just me and that I have to suck it up because I am from MN. Then someone told me that they don't turn the heat on in the entire city until October 1 every year. So even if its freezing out you can't turn up the heat because there is none until October 1. I think they must do this to save money or maybe because they want everyone to build up their fat reserves for the winter. So now I don't feel so bad that I am cold because no one in the entire city or maybe the whole country has heat. I guess we all will need to just suck it up until October 1........14 days and counting.

On a side note they are also shutting off the hot water on our entire block for a week because of some building construction on the block. So everyone on my block will be smelling worse than usual for the next week. When I asked my host Mom about it she just said yeah that's normal (which is what people usually tell me when I ask them about weird things that I don't understand as a foreigner). So I won't have heat or hot water until almost October 1...is this why US embassy workers in Latvia get hardship pay?