I got here late Tuesday night, picked up from the airport an hour and a half after my plane landed, seeing as how my friend Edwina (who is one of my dearest friends from the music school at Mizzou) and her boyfriend Bobby got back late from hiking in Yosemite. Go figure. We've hit the ground running ever since. With relatives still here from South Africa (a cousin, an aunt, and two adorable little-boy second cousins) for her graduation from UC-Davis with her masters, Edwina piled all of us into a rental van Wednesday morning and off we went to San Francisco for the day.
Again: Whoa.
The scenery and the weather here are, well... amazing. Edwina and Bobby (whom I'm also good friends with from our time together at Mizzou) complain about it being hot, but compared to Missouri summers, it is absolutely divine. Even though it's in the upper 80's and lower 90's during the day, it's soooo dry. And there's almost always a breeze blowing. And in San Francisco (by the bay), when the north wind whips in off the Pacific, you really almost feel... cold for a second, until it lets up and you feel the sunshine again. It's really the strangest sensation. Hot-cold, hot-cold, hot-cold. I sometimes feel like a 26-yr-old menopausal woman.
In the midwest, all the fields are the same: wheat, soybeans, or corn. Here, I had trouble recognizing the first field we drove by. And there are soooo many kinds of crops: almonds, walnuts, tomatos, apricots, oranges, alfalfa, olives, cherries... yesterday we bought cherries for $1.59 / lb. Incredible. And the sunset last night was unfathomable. Holy cow. The house we're staying in has a grapevine slowly making it's way along the courtyard arbor just outside the front door. And Davis has all sorts of bike paths all over the place, which makes it super easy to get around without driving. Today, I had a lovely mile-and-a-half ride into town to meet my gracious hosts and a relative or two for lunch. And oh yeah... it was fabulous. I've never been any place like this before. It is, in a word, incredible.
Yesterday I had lunch next to the Pacific at Fisherman's Wharf, after which we went down to the old arcade where I played on a baseball game machine from 1937. The game was unique in that it kept track of strikes, balls, and outs, and had all the names of the original players from the Yankee's World Series line-up from the year it was made. So. cool.
After that, we went to Ghirardelli's... you know, the chocolate company. Their factory / main headquarters is in San Francisco. And I had quite possibly the world's largest and richest hot fudge sundae ever. Edwina and I shared it, it being too big for either of us alone. Then we drove through the Golden Gate: wow. It's even better in person than it is in the pictures. The following picture does not do it justice. They say it's never done being painted. Apparently there's a crew of 30 or so people and all they do is paint the bridge. As soon as it's done on one side, they go back through and paint it all again. Wow.
It was roughly 7 pm by the time we got up there, and because of this 1. we got to see the fog start to roll in and 2. it was SUPER windy and cold. Felt like Missouri in March. Again: whoa. I definitely did not expect that one.
Oh yeah... and we saw Alcatraz from a distance. Edwina says we'll go back again before I leave so we can go in. And not only did we see Alcatraz, but we saw all kinds of busy activity that comes with being next to a bay. My favorite was the huge container ships that came in carrying literally hundreds of railway containers on board. This particularly hits home for me since my family has lived a block away from a train track for the past eight years and I've seen countless railway cars go through Old Monroe. The thought that they all get put on a ginormous ship and sail across the ocean absolutely blows my mind. I literally feel like I've followed them here from Old Monroe to see what the end of the track looks like for them.
This morning all but one of Edwina's relatives left. And so the whirlwind is over for the moment, but quite interesting while it lasted, seeing as how at least half of all yesterday's conversation was in Afrikaans, which I only ever understood the gist of when combined with hand gestures and a few choice words here and there. So. interesting. I spent half the day in my own world, wondering what was happening around me. And some of the cultural differences are incredible. But they are wonderful people and I have a standing invitation to go to South Africa whenever. Bobby wants to go there and be the first person to ever ride a giraffe, which I find completely hilarious since not only is there sure to be someone who's done that already, but also because the spine of a giraffe is a strict diagonal. But he's determined. I just think going would be an extraordinary adventure in and of itself. But we'll see... here we are at Fisherman's Wharf yesterday.
Whoa, California. Mind blown in only two days. And still two weeks to go :)
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