A few days ago I returned to the beautiful city of Seattle. I absolutely love this city. It's actually been 8 months since I left... my time abroad (I've never really liked that term, "abroad"... sounds pretentious or something... like, "What are you doing for the summer? Oh that's nice... I'm going abroaaad.")... okay, so my travels took me through Antarctica, New Zealand, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Singapore. Needless-to-say, it's an adjustment slipping back into these once comfortable Seattle-shoes. With that in mind, I'm going to do one of those list things...
10 Adjustments/Surprises/Novelties of Returning to Seattle, USA
10. Driving and everything related to it. I stalled my own car twice... that's just embarrassing. All the cars are huge, the highways are huge, the people are... never mind. Seattle traffic is ridiculous... how'd I forget that? And I actually got excited to find $2.99/gal gas.
9. How incredibly clean everything is... my God, it's unbelievable... this country is practically sterile. Trash, sewage, bugs... no where to be seen. Toilets? Spotless. We have it so good.
8. How far my money doesn't go...
$0.50 in Bangkok = Phad Thai ... $0.50 in Seattle = side of tartar sauce.
$5.00 in Siem Reap = room w/private bath ... $5.00 in Seattle = 1% of rent.
$17.00 on Air Asia = flight across Thailand ... $17.00 in Seattle = 1/2 tank of gas
7. Seeing the temperature (70F), and actually comprehending what that should feel like (Celsius still means nothing to me)... and then finding myself putting on jeans and a sweatshirt because I'm FREEZING.
6. Tap Water... drinking it, brushing my teeth with it, showering with my mouth open, washing vegetables, fruit, and not having to peel the stuff to eat it.
5. Personal Hygiene... every day I find myself in the bathroom, usually in the afternoon, staring at the stick of deodorant on the counter and wondering... "did I put deodorant on this morning?" It's a strange transition - how your threshold for cleanliness changes when you cease the transient life. Where as I would wear the same t-shirt and shorts for a week and shower every 3 days, now I wear a t-shirt twice before it's tossed in the laundry bin, and sometimes I even shower twice in a day.
4. Smoke free bars. Yup... while I was away, Washington state banned smoking in all bars and restaurants. Needless to say... this kicks ass.
3. How is it that every person in Seattle seems to be incredibly stylish, hip and beautiful. Either my standards went down, my self-conscious up, or I'm just out of touch with current trends. I know, I know... all of the above.
2. No. More. Broken. English. I can actually (well, theoretically) carry on complex and intellectual conversations.
1. Radio... NPR... KEXP... 'This American Life'... 'John in The Morning'... 'Science Fridays'... 'Car Talk'... 'The Roadhouse'... so good.
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2 comments:
You totally pegged it. Except for me, #8 goes a little something like this:
$7.50 in London = tube of toothpaste....$7.50 in Seattle = alder smoked salmon dinner on the pier, complete with salad, jojos and drink.
Welcome home, wayward friend. :-)
Ahhh, jojos. You know who had the best jojos in the world... Finch's, at the bottom of Crestview. On our morning walk to middle-school, we'd stop and buy a half-pound of jojos (w/fry-sauce of course), a bag of sour gummy worms, some big-league chew, and a quad-shot mocha. What the hell were we thinking?
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