Rain

Just a fun story that shows how much I really am messed up after life in the Sandbox.

I didn't look out the window today before I left the house because I forgot that in some places the weather changes day to day and you never know what to expect. It's not just a difference between 110 and 120, hot or really hot. It can be warm one day, cold the next, rainy the next, you just never know.

So today I took the minute long elevator ride downstairs, opened the door and was shocked by the fact that it was raining. I didn't know what to do and I paused there for a minute. Well, not exactly a minute. I stood there with the door open for so long that the door lady actually came out of her office to see if everything was ok. She only speaks Russian so that was fun.

I didn't realize it in the moment but I actually didn't know what to do. It was this internal struggle between several thoughts; The Sandbox idea of 'oh, can't go outside or do work because it's raining. I'll just go back upstairs and be lazy all day' Then there was the foreigner who has been in the Sandbox too long thought of 'I'll just roll up my jeans so they don't get wet and traipse through puddles of mud' Then I realized that it wasn't just rainy but cold too and I was in flip flops so what would I do when my feet froze?

There were a few more thoughts before I got to the point where I realized 'this can't be that hard. There are other people outside and they don't seem to be struggling with this concept of going outside in the rain. What do they know that I don't?' Then I realized that we have this contraption called the umbrella and it works well to keep people dry in the rain. An amazing concept.

I feel like such an idiot that it took me that long to come up with a solution to how to go outside in the rain. I think this might be just a part of what they mean when they talk about 'reverse culture shock'.