There were a few weeks during the summer when the sky wouldn't get dark until after midnight, and dawn would arrive again just past 4. I would leave my 7-9:15 class feeling like it was the middle of the day. Since I've been back from Tibet, it gets dark about halfway through my evening class.

If it's light from 4 to 12 in the summer, and from about 9 to 5 in the winter, we lose twelve hours of daylight in 6 months, or half an hour every week. I've never lived in a place where the change is as palpable as it is here. It gives me this bizarre feeling of hurtling around the sun that seems particularly suited to Moscow life.