Visiting Home

haakon — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 13:30:55 +0000

It is a strange feeling to visit a place that used to be home. It is both familiar, yet strange at the same time. This Christmas we left Edinburgh and traveled to Seattle to visit with family and friends. Traveling with us was our 5 month old boy. He behaved extraordinary well, but a journey of that length is still wearisome. A thought experiment. Imagine a carry-on bag which weighs roughly 15 pounds which is socially unacceptable to put either overhead, or under the seat. Rather, it must be held on the lap for the duration of the flight. Add to this some drooling, pooing, spitup, etc. This is work enough on its own if the baby is well behaved. Then add the possibility of crying and things begin to get fun. But Trygve was really exceptionally good. I do have significantly more respect for parents and patience with crying children on flights now. One tactic I recommend is to bring earplugs onto the flight to offer to people around you to diffuse the situation a bit.

So what did I notice about the States upon my return?

+ washers and dryers! Having two separate machines parallelizes the task of washing clothes making it possible to do more than 1 load a day. Astounding! Then make the machine large enough to contain more than 3 pairs of socks and you really have something!

+ appliances, bathrooms – I took a long shower at my parent’s house, forgetting that they had a water heater rather than on demand water heating. I thought to myself, man, the UK does this better. But then I thought about the fact that I had showered under gale force water pressure rather than a stream rate which could be compared to the rate of a glacier melting. Hmmm.

+ cheap food, cheap gas, cheap everything! The downside of this is a strong feeling of materialism, that your worth or value or importance is determined by how much you consume. Also, the obesity of the general population is staggering. I suppose an unsurprising side effect of cheap, fast food is that people eat too much. One grandmother observed that obesity may be the biggest health problem facing the nation in the years ahead.

+ friendly – people smile, customer service is actually helpful, random strangers talk to you, I hardly know how to respond!

- cars – It is mind boggling how central cars are to the American way of life. And cars is probably the wrong term to use here, as the number of trucks and SUV’s seems to dwarf the number of cars. Again this may be an example of wealth making it possible to take things to excess.

+ natural beauty – this is perhaps an unfair comparison, for how many places are as beautiful as Seattle? The man made beauty of Edinburgh far exceeds Seattle, but the lakes and sound and mountains in Seattle are stunning.

What did I miss from the UK? Driving is far superior in the UK. People travel at higher speeds, and yet I feel safer (maybe a side effect of having much fewer cars on the road, and smaller ones at that). In Edinburgh a green pedestrian walk symbol means you are safe to go. In the States it means, “now is your chance, but watch out because somebody turning might not see you”. I missed the beauty of Edinburgh buildings, the feeling of history, spires and castles, cobbled streets. And of course, I missed the BBC.

But the most important part of the trip was seeing family. How grand to witness family delight in seeing Trygve for the first time! How glorious to be parented rather than parenting for a while! We loved seeing family and friends, and were blessed by all those we stayed with. Now we return to our quiet life in the windy city.

More Pics!

~haakon

The Sorensens: Visiting Home

Visiting Home