Thursday, January 27, 2005
A week ago I hadn’t worn socks for weeks. Our time on the island of Roatan, about 50 miles off the coast of Honduras, was well spent. Raegan and I worked on our tans beside clear Caribbean waters by day and drank rum with folks from the islands, mon, by night. Today I am in a 4th floor apartment in the west-village, Manhattan. It is loud and it is cold and it is expensive and my skin is getting dryer and whiter by the second. What happened?
I’ll tell you….
Latin America is in my rearview. We finished off our trip with a visit to a Mayan ruin and a week on the beach. Were we sad to leave? Not really. The island was wonderful, relaxing, beautiful, and more, but our trip had run its course. As our date of departure neared, we felt more and more at ease with all that we had accomplished and with the fact that our trip would soon end. Rather than dreading the date we spent the closing days thinking over the last year and getting increasingly excited about our return home. We’d look at each other every once and a while and say, “I can’t believe we did it!” And we’d speculate about what it’d be like to, for the first time in a long time, spend time with people who know us. Now we know. And it’s nice, really nice.
Our trip home (to the US from the island) represented a new record for us: eight vehicles in one day. It went like this: taxi to airplane to airplane to bus to train to bus to airplane to the biggest SUV ever! Welcome to America.
As many of you know we chose to do an east coast swing before heading back to California. It’s been great. It’s allowed us a chance to see family and friends, and to take culture shock dose after dose. We started off in Herndon, Virginia, a suburb of D.C. with my cousin’s family, the Baylor’s. We couldn’t have had a softer landing pad. We relaxed, watched football, ate leftovers and were treated to a home-cooked meal. I scratched my head a little at our beloved game of football. But besides that, our only real culture-shock moment for the day was on our trip to the “new”, Wal-mart sized grocery store. When we walked in to the hangar-come-store, the woman behind us was so overwhelmed by what she saw, she gasped to her friend, “Oh my god,” who responded, “Isn’t it beautiful?” We too were impressed with the selection and quality of the fare on hand. So much so that were stood in the way of the shopping carts of others, jaws agape, paralyzed. We didn’t calm down until we were buckled in and watching a Gilligan’s Island episode on the DVD player in the back half of the SUV on the way home.
Next was D.C. and the inauguration really put a crimp on our plan to ignore the results of the election for as long as humanly possible. Tina also treated us to the comforts of home. In this case it was new toothbrushes, cheesy poofs, good beer, and a Neil Diamond CD. But most importantly, Tina asked us a gazillion questions about our trip. Whenever she saw our eyes glassing over, falling into a culture shock coma, she would ask us how we acquired dental floss along the way. Or she’d ask something trivial. All jokes aside, this question-asking tactic worked wonders. Besides being interviewed we also walked around the mall, but we kept tripping over sand bags and falling in bunkers. Besides it was damn cold. Off to Baltimore….
Paul and Amy kept the hospitality train rolling. We caught up with Tim, who cooked a mean curry, and Mike and had so much fun we started planning the next reunion. Raegan saw the city for the first time and really liked it. We met a certain Olympian. We ate in dinners, drank beers in dives and had a crab feast in a strip mall. Very Baltimore, very America. We had a great time there. Next to Phili.
Chris picked us up at the Greyhound station and took us on a tour of the city of brotherly love. The next day we ate a cheese steak in the early goings of a snowstorm and then hunkered down as the snow fell and fell. It was a far cry from turquoise waters, but whataya gonna do? The next afternoon we sat in a waiting room for our bus and listened to Cantonese pop music. Isn’t our country weird and wonderful? We took the Chinatown bus to NY, where I sit.
New York is amaizing. We’ve had a terrific time catching up with our old college pals, Allison, Nat, John, and Thaddeus, and we’ve been able to hang out with many other wonderful people. We ate oysters in a subway station and spent $13 on a sandwich at Katz’s deli. Wonderful and weird, weird and wonderful. As I write this it’s 10 degrees outside. We catch our plane in 6 hours and we’re California dreaming. Off to the Met.
I think we both have another blog or two in us so stay tuned. Oh, and more pictures are on the way.
Comments-[ comments.]
I’ll tell you….
Latin America is in my rearview. We finished off our trip with a visit to a Mayan ruin and a week on the beach. Were we sad to leave? Not really. The island was wonderful, relaxing, beautiful, and more, but our trip had run its course. As our date of departure neared, we felt more and more at ease with all that we had accomplished and with the fact that our trip would soon end. Rather than dreading the date we spent the closing days thinking over the last year and getting increasingly excited about our return home. We’d look at each other every once and a while and say, “I can’t believe we did it!” And we’d speculate about what it’d be like to, for the first time in a long time, spend time with people who know us. Now we know. And it’s nice, really nice.
Our trip home (to the US from the island) represented a new record for us: eight vehicles in one day. It went like this: taxi to airplane to airplane to bus to train to bus to airplane to the biggest SUV ever! Welcome to America.
As many of you know we chose to do an east coast swing before heading back to California. It’s been great. It’s allowed us a chance to see family and friends, and to take culture shock dose after dose. We started off in Herndon, Virginia, a suburb of D.C. with my cousin’s family, the Baylor’s. We couldn’t have had a softer landing pad. We relaxed, watched football, ate leftovers and were treated to a home-cooked meal. I scratched my head a little at our beloved game of football. But besides that, our only real culture-shock moment for the day was on our trip to the “new”, Wal-mart sized grocery store. When we walked in to the hangar-come-store, the woman behind us was so overwhelmed by what she saw, she gasped to her friend, “Oh my god,” who responded, “Isn’t it beautiful?” We too were impressed with the selection and quality of the fare on hand. So much so that were stood in the way of the shopping carts of others, jaws agape, paralyzed. We didn’t calm down until we were buckled in and watching a Gilligan’s Island episode on the DVD player in the back half of the SUV on the way home.
Next was D.C. and the inauguration really put a crimp on our plan to ignore the results of the election for as long as humanly possible. Tina also treated us to the comforts of home. In this case it was new toothbrushes, cheesy poofs, good beer, and a Neil Diamond CD. But most importantly, Tina asked us a gazillion questions about our trip. Whenever she saw our eyes glassing over, falling into a culture shock coma, she would ask us how we acquired dental floss along the way. Or she’d ask something trivial. All jokes aside, this question-asking tactic worked wonders. Besides being interviewed we also walked around the mall, but we kept tripping over sand bags and falling in bunkers. Besides it was damn cold. Off to Baltimore….
Paul and Amy kept the hospitality train rolling. We caught up with Tim, who cooked a mean curry, and Mike and had so much fun we started planning the next reunion. Raegan saw the city for the first time and really liked it. We met a certain Olympian. We ate in dinners, drank beers in dives and had a crab feast in a strip mall. Very Baltimore, very America. We had a great time there. Next to Phili.
Chris picked us up at the Greyhound station and took us on a tour of the city of brotherly love. The next day we ate a cheese steak in the early goings of a snowstorm and then hunkered down as the snow fell and fell. It was a far cry from turquoise waters, but whataya gonna do? The next afternoon we sat in a waiting room for our bus and listened to Cantonese pop music. Isn’t our country weird and wonderful? We took the Chinatown bus to NY, where I sit.
New York is amaizing. We’ve had a terrific time catching up with our old college pals, Allison, Nat, John, and Thaddeus, and we’ve been able to hang out with many other wonderful people. We ate oysters in a subway station and spent $13 on a sandwich at Katz’s deli. Wonderful and weird, weird and wonderful. As I write this it’s 10 degrees outside. We catch our plane in 6 hours and we’re California dreaming. Off to the Met.
I think we both have another blog or two in us so stay tuned. Oh, and more pictures are on the way.
