Weird Weather Makes Me Remonisce

Four weeks ago I was snowshoeing during my lunch break at work…four days ago it was 80 degrees outside and I was watching a movie in my back yard.…four hours ago it was snowing again.  The weather is a constant surprise here in New England, and I love it.  I’ve lived temporarily in northern California, Central America, the Caribbean and Asia but I could never give up life in New England. 

While Central America provided me with some amazing weather, I really missed the snow.   If you’re a SCUBA diver there is no better place to live.  You simply take your dive gear to the curb, hail a passing cab (they’re everywhere) and get a ride to the beach for $5.  But the leaves never change to the brilliant colors like they do here, and then there are all those nasty things in the jungle.  I spent several months living and working in the jungle when I was 19 or 20 and it was the only time in my life where dehydration almost killed me.   You really have to be careful because if the heat doesn’t get you a snake or a spider will.  I would become a bit phobic having to check the insides of my shoes for scorpions before I put them on every morning…or having to check under the toilet seat for a tarantula.  It still makes my skin crawl.  Did you know that red ants build their ant-hills to be almost six feet tall down there?  I don’t miss that at all.

The Caribbean is nice for a while but it’s a whole different way of life that I don’t think I could ever adjust to.  Living in paradise has its own unique set of problems.  Being from the U.S. meant I was automatically loved when I walked inside a store (because of my U.S. currency) and then instantly hated while walking the streets.  I encountered groups of young men who survived entirely off of cornering Americans and bullying them into giving up their money.  This was before the days of debit cards, when everyone carried cash.  Maybe it’s changed a little since the early ‘90s, I don’t know.   The food prices were insane!  I understand that beef and other imported items should cost more, but even the fish?  Locally caught mahi-mahi and red snapper were more expensive there then at a store in New Hampshire.  I guess the greed in people takes over and they just expect you’ll pay more for it…and we do.  To give you an example, a good burger & fries here in the U.S. will cost you about $10 maximum at a burger joint and maybe $17 at a fancy sit down restaurant.  In the Caribbean, a burger and fries will cost you about $30 plus gratuity.  Gratuity is not an option either.  When your bill comes it will clearly state, “GRATUITY NOT INCLUDED!!!!” in red ink and underlined about six times.  Not paying a 15% gratuity can get you barred from a restaurant for life.  That’s not the way I like to do business.

Asia was pretty close to the conditions I was used to in New England.  I was on the South Korean peninsula and was blessed with snow, spring rains and no poisonous animals.  There were those nasty Japanese Hornets but I didn’t see too many of them.  Autumn still didn’t bring me the bright colored leaves I missed, but the hardest thing to get used to was the culture of the people of Korea.  They are a very polite people and I have only good things to say about them but the customs and food are just so different from what a westerner is used to.  They snacked on dried squid as we snack on potato chips and they eat kimchi (pronounced CHEM-chee) as a side dish with almost every meal.  For those who don’t know, kimchi is an aromatic fermented cabbage salad that could make a seagull faint. They are very age-oriented too.  For example, I was so impressed with the way Korean families care for their elderly.  They don’t ship them to nursing homes and write them off.  In most cases the elderly remain the “heads” of the family until their deaths.  However, I did not like how things were marketed in ads and on television.  They believe children are the future and so everything is marketed toward kids; cars, dish soap, food, everything.  To make it worse, all commercials (radio & T.V.) were narrated by young women with agonizingly high-pitched voices so that they would sound like little children. 

Of all the places I've lived (other than New England) northern California was the easiest to adjust to, for obvious reasons.  I spent two years living and working between Monterey and the east side of the Los Padre National Forest.  Obviously the culture wasn’t much of a change; just the weather and climate.  It was strange that while in Monterey it was always damp and foggy, while only two hours away, King City was almost like a desert.  The topography of the area plays so much into the region.  The first time I drove through Napa Valley was at night and my mind was playing tricks on me.  I looked out over a vast field of grapes that stretched all the way to the horizon.  All I could see was blackness.  Having grown up near Gloucester, Massachusetts my mind could not accept that an area that large (without lights) was anything other than water.  It was a strange feeling that my mind just couldn’t process.  These days I live near the White Mountains and enjoy the seasons of “summer, autumn, winter and spring”…but in California the seasons were more like “fire, flood, drought and earthquake.”

I enjoyed all the places I’ve lived and I’m incredibly grateful to have had the chance to travel when I was young.  Now that I’m older I’m most happy when my yard is aflame with the colors of fall leaves, blanketed with fluffy white snow or just covered with patches of clover.  The smell of lilacs blooming in the spring and apples in the fall.  The sounds of seagulls at the shore and frogs croaking at night.  Where a sandwich costs less than two hours pay and nothing venomous is hiding in my shoes.