Back in the USA

We’re back. I can no long ignore that fact. Technically, we were in the US once we landed in Hawaii. But Hawaii has that delightful otherworldly feel. I’m always surprised they accept US currency. And so it was that landing in LA that brought our return to my attention with brut force. Tears filled my eyes when we touched down. I’m not quite ready to be back.

Don’t get me wrong, seeing Linnea arrive to pick us up was a wonderful sight. Now we’re on our way to Texas to see my mother and George and friends. That’s all good. I can’t wait to see our dear friends in Annapolis. I missed the people who fill our life but I’m starting to mourn the end of the experience we’ve been enjoying.

We’ve both noticed little things that were common before but now strike us as unusual. For example, we keep waiting to go through passport control. At the LA airport it felt odd that we could just walk off the plane into the city. Didn’t anyone want to check us out? Guess not. Linnea whisked us off to our hotel although “whisked” may be a slight overstatement as we traveled a ten-lane freeway for the first time in ages. All around were enormous cars and trucks. They seem huge by the rest of the world’s standards. What is it that we need to put in all this space that others don’t have? Our car which seemed large in Europe now looks like a compact.

As I stood in line at a fast food restaurant for the first time in months, I fumbled with my US bills. How odd it felt to hold this money and realize that it felt strange. Plus, all the bills are the same color and size. That now seems like a rather inefficient system. Once I finished staring at my money, I handed it to the impatient, near-comatose fast food worker in front of me who reluctantly answered my questions. I was one of those pesky customers. It’s not like there wasn’t bad service in France, but, honestly, it happened rarely. As my French teacher explained, sometimes it’s less a difference between the US and France but more a difference between city and country living. I think, in many cases, that she’s right. In Cotignac, we knew the butcher, the café owner, the family who ran the grocery store and our favorite market vendors – and fast food literally didn’t exist. I’m still adjusting to the timing of meals. Mike keeps reminding me that we no longer need to allot one and half to two hours to eat out for lunch.

We stayed at a charming hotel in Santa Monica that was facing the ocean. It was beautiful. In the mornings, we could look out over the beach and ocean. I watched several groups of 20 to 30 runners jogging on the path. No more was I the unusual one who got up early to run. I had company!

Our hotel, The Georgian, reminded us of our hotel facing the Mediterranean in Nice where we stayed on our last night in France. Here in Santa Monica, however, there were no little sidewalk cafes to walk to. How odd to drive everywhere instead of walking along charming, narrow streets. As we went from one fabulous restaurant to another over the weekend, I noticed that I felt distracted by conversations at adjacent tables. Everyone was speaking the same language and I understood what they said! That was new and different. Then there was the constant presence of Blackberries. Everyone was spinning that little ball, punching on teeny keyboards, or talking (sometimes far too loudly) into little microphones dangling from their ear. It’s not like we didn’t see cell phones and such in France but it didn’t seem so pervasive. And you would never interrupt something as sacred as a meal with a cell phone or Blackberry.

We’re also back in the land of super air conditioning. It seems that the US is the place where indoor temperatures need to be – at least for me – freezing! I don’t know whether it’s that the people in Europe are generally small, but I never felt too cold until we arrived back in the US.

There are also more processed foods here. They were overseas as well but not as prevalent. I had to laugh at the “healthy” snack bar we were given on the plane (yes, a snack on a US airline!). The wrapper, covered with photos of fruit, read, “natural flavors with other natural flavors.”

Mike finished reading the sports pages to discover that they were filled with basketball and baseball. Soccer was relegated to a portion of the last page and rugby and cricket had been thoughtlessly omitted all together. Imagine!

I’m sure I’ll adjust and it’ll all seem normal again although I’m not sure that I want some of this to be “normal.” We’ve flown over the Alps, the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, the coast of Australia and New Zealand, and the Pacific Ocean. From the plane, I look below as Arizona and New Mexico pass by and Texas looms ahead. I know I’m home. I know I’ll be glad. I know I’ll love being with friends again. It will just take a little time to adjust to this now foreign country. For now, I look forward to iced tea, TexMex, and barbeque. I just hope our passports work in Texas.