Welcome back, now hurry up!

Megan and I arrived at PDX around 0700 last Saturday. The weather in Oregon was spectacular. We shivered a little bit, but were very grateful for the absence of humidity. Oliver arrived a few hours later but we weren't able to take him home until 1400 because he never went through customs.

***Culture Shock***
In Hawaii, Megan and I had breakfast at small touristy diner whose name escapes me at the moment. The waitress arrived to take our drink order and said, "What can I get you guys to drink?!?" The energy that poured out of her overwhelmed us. For a full five seconds Megan and I stared at each other with blank, semi-startled faces. After those long, painful seconds had passed I uttered "Water" in a barely audible tone. Megan added "Yeah, lots of water". The waitress probably thought we were stoned afterall, we were sure she was on crank. Our reaction was a mix of a long flight, culture shock and the fact that the waitress was extremely bubbley. In Pohnpei servers were very relaxed so our eating experiences were also very relaxed. We had a hard time enjoying our meal due to the waitresses energy and efficiently.

On monday I accompanied my mom to costco. I ended up driving home. At one point my mom said "why are you going 25?". I was in fact going 25mph in a 45mph zone. I never drove over 30 mph on Pohnpei.

On our flight to Pennsylvania we were more than shocked when the plane hooked up to the terminal after landing. As soon as the captain turned off the Fasten Seatbelts sign it seemed as though everyone exploded. Megan and I sat there stunned as people frantically grabbed for there bags in the overhead bins.

This isn't really culture shock but really shocking. Pohnpei lays about six degrees north of the equator. Throughout the year the number of hours of daylight only changes by about thirty minutes. The sun would set at about 1820 in December and about 1840 in June. We learned that if the sun is setting then it must be about 1830. This is no the case here, 45 degrees north of the equator. Not only do are the days longer but I also feel as though I have no concept of time.

That's all for now, I'm sure there will be other shocking things as the days go on.

Sidenote: I wrote this entire post from my new cellphone. Although it does have a full keyboard I'm sure there are more typos than usual.