Washing machines
Drying machines (even more so than washers, especially in the wet season)
Plastic baggies
Hot showers that don't electrocute you
Space heaters
(central heating and air are quite unimaginable)
Not needing to eat "scrap" pieces of meat- this includes back bones, chicken feet, neck, liver, heart, intestines, shoulder joints, hoofs, and whole heads.
Having enough pieces of silverware in the cafeteria
Dansko shoes
Thick carpeting
Dependable internet
Kleenex in doctors offices
Canned pasta sauce
Good mustard
Ethnic variety in food
Basil
Buses with a schedule and route
Cars with intact suspension systems
Drivers that use turn signals
Down comforters
Movie theaters
Store and restaurant info available online
Comfortable couches
Customer service
Availability of health care (I know we've got problems, but at least you don't have to walk hours to the nearest clinic only to have to drive hours into town, worry about whether the ER will be open or not, have to wonder if the doctors drunk or even around, or be told that life saving option is only available in one city in the whole country.)
Showing posts with label living abroad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label living abroad. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Stress Abroad
Two thoughts occurred to me this week:
One is that the pace of life in Cusco is starting to infiltrate my pace of life. I realized that here, I don't even try to pack in stuff for a straight 12 hours before crashing. Some things are just fine waiting till tomorrow. I don't even feel guilty or weird about it. Its just how things are here. As a result I sleep better, don't need as much caffeine and am overall more relaxed.
I also realized that living in a foreign country produces this underlying low level of stress. You don't know the customs, the social norms, how to do things, where to find things. The latest example of this is tonight when I needed to buy a pair of scrubs tomorrow. In the states, even if I didn't know where to buy scrubs, I'd look it up online, drive there, pick some up, and be home in a maximum of 45 minutes. Here it took a bit of searching, a closed store, and two hours of waiting while a pair was hand-made for me. This totaled over 3.5 hours. This, combined with the uncertainty of if I'd find it or not was quite stressful.
Of course, my new hand-made, personally chosen color scrubs for my personal dimensions are pretty damn sweet. And the pockets are way better than any in US scrubs.
One is that the pace of life in Cusco is starting to infiltrate my pace of life. I realized that here, I don't even try to pack in stuff for a straight 12 hours before crashing. Some things are just fine waiting till tomorrow. I don't even feel guilty or weird about it. Its just how things are here. As a result I sleep better, don't need as much caffeine and am overall more relaxed.
I also realized that living in a foreign country produces this underlying low level of stress. You don't know the customs, the social norms, how to do things, where to find things. The latest example of this is tonight when I needed to buy a pair of scrubs tomorrow. In the states, even if I didn't know where to buy scrubs, I'd look it up online, drive there, pick some up, and be home in a maximum of 45 minutes. Here it took a bit of searching, a closed store, and two hours of waiting while a pair was hand-made for me. This totaled over 3.5 hours. This, combined with the uncertainty of if I'd find it or not was quite stressful.
Of course, my new hand-made, personally chosen color scrubs for my personal dimensions are pretty damn sweet. And the pockets are way better than any in US scrubs.
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