Airport

These were some thoughts about our journey I wrote while waiting for Jordan to find our lost bag:

 



 I felt that we had left the USA as soon as we stepped up to the ticket counter in the international terminal of Chicago O'hare. The British woman helping us was rather cold. She did not smile as she let our overweight bags go through without a fee. Perhaps it was because Jordan asked her to switch the scale from kilograms to pounds. And when we entered the security line I was immediately immersed in a combination of smells that would have been horrid enough if encountered alone much less all at once. (I will not pretend that I shower every day, or even every other day, but suddenly my standards of cleanliness seemed very high compared to what I was encountering).

Amidst the strange and unfamiliar sounds, sights and smells, I found comfort in what was familiar. Seeing 'Kimberly Clark' on the toilet paper dispenser in the London airport calmed me, even though the toilet paper came out one ply at a time as though it were some sort of thin, low-quality tissue. Another familiar name, ThyssenKrupp, was marked on the jetway, a name permanently engraved in my mind since freshman year of college living on the 7th floor with a ThyssenKrupp elevator to transport me up and down multiple times a day. I never imagined seeing that name would be so comforting. Suddenly the banana, now mushed nearly brown in my suitcase, seemed like a precious commodity. Not because I couldn't find bananas in Germany, but because it came from my home.

Somehow when I imagined living abroad I pictured myself embracing newness and finding fascination in the differences. Yet my focus, at least initially, seems to be in discovering the similarities that make me feel like I could possibly still be in America.

All of this is not to say that I haven't discovered wonderful and charming aspects of life abroad (and I haven't even left the airport!) (So maybe it doesn't count). But how cute is it that the British call sandwiches toasties and serve porridge instead of oatmeal??  Also, in the bathrooms (at least in the airport) there is a button on the floor to step on and flush. And I thought Americans were the ones averse to germs! It's brilliant. I'd like one in my home. And while I did miss seeing baseball fields from the airplane, castles really are much cooler.