The Good
1. The weather is my absolute perfect ideal! Not too hot, not too cold. It is usually in the mid to upper 80s during the day. In the morning and after the sun sets it cools down a bit and which is a nice change from daytime and with a cardigan it is still warm enough that it is comfortable and I don't get cold! :) LOVING IT!
2. The city is full of palm trees, which of course makes me smile, and surrounded by mountains. Gorgeous!
3. I love hearing salsa music coming from cars when I'm walking down the street, blaring out of my neighbor's apartment, in the stores walking around the mall - basically anywhere I go.
4. There are tons of places to dance here and I will get a lot of dancing done!
5. The wide variety of delicious fruit. Sugar mangos are my new favorite!
The Bad
1. Because Cali is "so hot" - in my opinion just right - the vast majority of people do not have hot water. This means showering has become the most dreaded part of my day. If I don't return home at the end of the year it will be because the cold showers killed me. If I do, it will be because of the cold showers.
2. Not having an oven in my apartment. I love to cook. Not sure how I'm going to manage a year without pizza or roasted vegetables! :(
3. My neighborhood - too expensive and far away from everything.
4. All the stores have someone to bag your things for you and they all tie the bag handles in a knot before handing them to you. This makes them feel bulkier when you're carrying them around and then you have to untie them all when you get home. Really pretty minor but this is going to be one of those things that just irks me.
5. Getting around the city. It's big and takes awhile to get anywhere via bus. It gets dark early and I'm not comfortable walking around myself after dark - sometimes even the couple of blocks from the bus stop to wherever I'm going. Which makes getting places quite a challenge!
The Strange
1. Traffic rules are really more of guidelines that mostly don't get followed. Road markings are more for decoration than to tell you where you can or can't go. Lanes of traffic are non-existent. I'm pretty sure that car horns are just to entertain drivers that get bored. At night when the roads are less busy, red lights have no meaning.
2. The windows have no screens. Remarkably, despite leaving my windows open almost 24 hours a day, I can count on my fingers the number of bugs I have seen in my apartment (aside from the ant fiasco).
3. The grocery stores. Eggs don't need to be refrigerated. Who knew!? You can also tell by the color of the yolks that their chickens are much healthier than the ones in the US. Milk, along with just about everything else you can imagine, comes in bags. Other things that come in bags: water, mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, apple sauce, pasta sauce, bbq sauce, tartar sauce. I'm told that this is because of shipping costs and the weight of bottles and jars.
4. People here like to talk. In meetings everyone gets a turn to share. Even if your idea is the same as the previous three people who shared. Handouts that could be read on your own in ten minutes? It's much more fun to read them in a group over the course of two hours. Meetings here are looooooooooong.
5. Parking lots. I was so confused the first time I went with someone to the mall and we parked. They gave us a ticket.
-You have to pay to park at the mall?
-No.
-Well then what's the ticket for?
-So they know that it's your car.
-Well course it's your car. You're driving it. Why would you be coming or going in a car that's not
yours......Ooooooooh.....right.....
Different world!
6. The hallways in the malls are all open air. This means birds can strut around the mall with you.
7. The carrots.
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| They only come in one size. Massive. No baby carrots here. |
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