"This is the kind of false courtesy we're not sure how to
deal with yet."
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Well, we no longer have material for emails about
exotic places and doing really simple things that are made almost
impossible by the circumstances. We are about like everyone else. In
short, we are back in the States.
We've been here over a week now. We arrived on April
9th, Tuesday, after a night's trip from Ensenada-60 miles. We motored
through the San Diego harbor in the gray early morning (which was very
cold for our poor unacclimatized tropical selves and not at all like the
southern California we all seem to picture) and went back and forth across
it while Mum and Bronwen cooked a fry-up breakfast to get rid of the last
eggs and vegetables before the scourge of customs, waiting for eight so we
could get in to the customs dock and check in. It was almost exactly eight
when Dad cried, "Oh, God, there are the Hoptoads!" and seized the wheel
from me. He revved the engine and we got to the dock just a few feet ahead
of the Toads. Ours is a competitive friendship.
The dock we were directed to was a brand-new one now
serving as a customs dock. (We asked an official if we could stay on and
be the first tenants at the dock, and he said, "I wish you could, sir."
This is the kind of false courtesy we're not sure how to deal with yet.)
The Hoptoads pulled into a slip adjoining ours and we waited for the
officials to come. As a matter of fact there was only one official, who
came when Bronwen, Douglas and I were up top. He asked us all what country
we were citizens of (he asked Mum to show him her green-card), how many
states there were, and whether we had any food we should surrender. We had
one egg left, which we offered up (he didn' t even ask about it), and a
pound of chorizo (we actually forgot to confess some hot dogs we had left,
but so far we haven't been found out), and that was it. He didn't even
send along an immigration official, didn't even step on the boat. We could
have been hiding anything down below-not that I wanted him to rip apart
the boat, of course.
We five kids kicked a soccer ball on a grassy area by
the waterfront while the adults tried to get free days at a marina. Our
membership of the Anacortes Yacht Club saved us $60 with three free days
at the Silver Gate marina, and although the Hoptoads' lack of insurance
and a yacht club didn't get them anything special they came along to
Silver Gate. It was a pretty nice marina, with bathrooms and showers and a
piano and book swap-definitely much nicer than the Anacortes one was or
is.
That evening we went in to town-not Downtown, just
Point Loma-and found our way to the Vons supermarket. We found it very
expensive, but although we didn't get any meat because of that we did get
bagels and yogurt and a gallon of ice cream and hand soap and a lot of
other things we've been missing. We ended our first day back in the States
by sharing the ice cream with the Toads and discussing insurance.
Recording all our days since then would get very
boring. Most of them have been pretty quiet considering we've just
returned to Civilization. One day we went to a mall and tried to get a
cell phone and clothing to supplement all our shabby and outgrown
cold-weather stuff. We got the cell phone after about a week, but we had
to resort to thrift stores to get sweatshirts or fleecies or anything that
wasn't designed for looks rather than warmth. We had better luck in Sri
Lanka.
It seems almost natural now to be able to go up to
someone and ask directions or explanations or just say hello, although the
first time someone asked me if I wanted anything or was just looking in a
shop I almost jumped. You usually skip the conventions when you can't
understand what the other person is saying, and if someone goes through
them anyway I usually smile nervously and edge away. Things, especially
food, aren't as cheap as they were in places like Central America; we
still haven't gotten over the prices in Vons. We still make inexcusable
fun of most things about America, the people and the commercials and the
conversations people have, and we aren't used to the rules and regulations
yet. (We apparently have the wrong kind of propane tank, although we
managed to get it filled by an untrained worker on the weekend.) The city
is definitely overwhelming, but no more so than any city would be;
probably less since we can understand everything. When we were introduced
to the many divisions of San Diego the reaction was to ignore them all.
But on the whole I think I'm glad to be back here. We
have a really convenient part of town, Point Loma, for food-shopping and
doing laundry and getting marine supplies, and all the cars are very good
about stopping for pedestrians (although I think we look like homeless
people or bums, walking with grungy canvas bags full of groceries,
throwing a Frisbee in a parking lot during school hours, decanting garbage
into cans bit by bit). It is also, of course, very very convenient that
everyone speaks English.
The Toads spend most of their time at their friend
Kelly's apartment, watching movies and borrowing her car and being very
social, and if we were alone we'd feel very left out. As it is, however,
we have our own useful connections in town: the Windflowers, friends from
Gibraltar and the Canaries, who came back here almost a year ago after
their own circumnavigation, and are still living on their boat on a
mooring, and on weekends in a free anchorage. There are three of them that
we know and that live on the boat, Karen, Gary and the boy Bronwen's age,
Nathaniel. We've got together most days and they've lent us Gary's office
to use the Internet several times. They made us familiar with the
aforesaid divisions of San Diego and their uses, as well as the bus and
trolley system, and we have had quite a social time here.
We will move on to the L.A. area in a few days, where
we hope to meet up with some relatives living there and see Disneyland
again with the Toads; after that we'll hop our way up the California coast
and up to Washington again, hopefully all in the next month. The biggest
and most interesting part of the trip is over, and I don't think any of us
have fully realized it yet, but we're getting there. Emma
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