Winter weather provides alternative housing at Greg Page

By Taylor Moak

Yane Ferreira, age 12, climbs out of an igloo she built with her siblings behind the Greg Page apartments. Photo by Adam Wolffbrandt | Staff

An igloo is not a common sight very many places and especially not on UK’s campus.

However, three kids who live in Greg Page apartments with their parents spent a few hours Tuesday and Wednesday building a life-size igloo.

Cecilia Ferreira, a post-doctoral student in bioenvironmental engineering, said her children Elys, 11, Yane, 12, and Theo, 15, built the igloo in four hours.

The Ferrerias are from Brazil and have only been in Kentucky for six months.

“We don’t have snow (in Brazil),” Cecilia said.

The Ferreira kids had time to build an igloo because they have been out of school because of the snow, Cecilia said.

The only items the kids and their father, Williams, used to build the igloo were two plastic UK mail bins.

“(We used) just a box,” Yane said.

The igloo is about seven feet tall, enough for an average adult to stand in.

The Ferreiras carved out “Brasil” in the snow inside the igloo and left some paper and a pen for guests to leave their mark.
The Ferrerias placed a wooden branch by the door of the igloo and Theo joked that it was an antenna for the igloo and that the igloo had wireless Internet.

Theo said an igloo was not their original intention.

“We don’t have igloos in Brazil,” Theo said. “We had (the) idea to make a snow fort, (but) my father had the idea to make an igloo. So we did.”