Dear Fellow Expat: In February 2000, my father put me on a plane to Chicago. “If you’re going to college out there, you need to see what the winter is like,” he said. So, I boarded, landed, arrived at my hotel, and then put on shorts. A freak heatwave made it 70 degrees for three days. Piece of cake, I thought. Ten months later, I was walking up Sheridan Road in Evanston, IL. The snow somehow was rising as the wind blew and hit me in the face. The wind chill was minus 35 Fahrenheit. As the snow...