Love of Camping

 I used to love camping more than anything. My love of being in beautiful places has always been expressed in where I chose to live. Do you lead a lifestyle that expresses itself in where you live?

Dawn

Currently, I'm living in a beautiful place in Hawaii near a stream, under a roof in a "coffee shack." It's been around two years that I've been carrying my drinking and cooking water from a purified source and using ice in coolers for refrigeration. I have a two burner propane stove top that needs to be lit. My water for washing drips off the roof (fortunately, it's not hot water as it is in some places in Hawaii where the plumbing travels over lava rocks and heats up.) On the Big Island, you can pick your temperature by choosing where you live in altitude, and I'm 1450 ft. up from sea level. This means it never gets too cold and rarely gets too hot. Although I don't have hot water at home, I have been able to get regular hot showers at the huge local public pool, which isn't far away. My place is so remote, I don't even have an address. My friend quips it's "third world middle class" because movies and Internet are possible with the generator running. I probably have the lowest carbon footprint of anyone you know personally.

Spiderweb on the front lanai

Previous to this lifestyle, I lived in an RV while it was parked in a beautiful spot, but without movies and only library Internet. So this particular lifestyle has been a slight improvement. But it's been more expensive, mostly because I'm a half hour drive from a food store. I need a car because it's too far for me to walk straight uphill that is a few miles from where the bus stop is located. But I do enjoy the quarter mile "hike" to my shack from where I park my car by the road. The road to is too rough for anything but a four wheel drive vehicle. Keeping the grass short that protects the road from turning to mud is hot work.

Accepting this lifestyle hasn't been so foreign or unacceptable to me, given my previous love of camping. If I add the time up I've been doing some form of "camping," it appears that I've been living in an extended camping situation for over a decade.

Perhaps because of my current situation, it probably shouldn't be surprising that I don't go camping when I go away on vacation anymore...which is what I used to do every time I traveled anywhere. I think that I'm finally getting tired of camping. So now when I go away, I stay with friends in their houses for a little bit of "civilization" for a vacation from camping. When I come home, again I'm happy to be there, away from the B-flat hum of electricity - for awhile longer. Who would not want to come home to something like this?

Evening Rainbow

 

Wolf Teacher

I have known a couple of wolves,
and they were pretty socialized
animals, but they also did have
their own agenda, which might
or might not include you
as a human in their plans.
The most striking difference
between dogs and wolves was
the wolves’ lack of being
affected by what you
thought of them.

Dogs always care and want
to know you are pleased
with them – and adult wolves 

could pretty much care less 

what your needs were. It's 

part of why wolves have 

self-respect.
I have experienced exceptions 

to that lack of care. One of the
wolves I knew I accepted the 

responsibility to take care of as
a house sitter for six weeks 

while her people traveled. Of 

 course I had been friends 

with the wolf, having met her
previously. But I did not really 

appreciate how the wolf had
accepted me into the pack as 

a “family” member when I 

began to take care of her. 

Ten days into taking care of 

the wolf, I got some very bad 

news that a former boyfriend 

of mine had committed suicide. 

I was on the phone for days 

helping my ex’s relatives find 

places to stay when they 

arrived from out of state. Our

 ten year relationship had continued 

with his family, despite the two of 

us breaking up the five years
previous to his death. Of course, 

there were many cleanup details 

of sorting out the loose ends of an 

end of life scenario.
The strange thing was, with the 

wolf and I having spent only ten 

days together, for three days 

following the news, that wolf 

did not leave my side when I was 

with her. I was both touched and 

shocked to have become adopted 

as a pack member by her so 

absolutely as was evidenced by 

this wolf’s actions. The wolf was a 

source of solace by matching my 

state of mind and then transitioning 

me out of it better than any ever-enthusiastic
doe-eyed dog could have been. I’d 

never experienced anything like it 

then or since.
Strangely enough, this experience 

with the wolf made me understand
how many advantages there were to 

tempering my blinding enthusiasm
with a little friendly reserve. I began 

to show certain others with my actions 

their relative importance to me, and 

people responded.
People in my community took me 

so much more intentionally (even
when I wasn’t serious) as I made 

these changes in being aware of
how I affected them. It was quite 

a rite of passage for me.
But maybe there was perhaps 

another thing going on entirely...
Have you had experiences with 

a wolf?

Special

When I was sixteen, I made an agreement with my mother to smile more often. Because of our bone structure, we have a mouth that turns down because our lower jaw is a bit small in relation to our skulls. This makes it look as if we're frowning or are being seriously judgmental when our face is at rest.

Not long before she died at fifty-four, my mom was starting to become upset about becoming older. She pointed out that her face was now sagging, making her down-turned resting face frown more noticeable. Her face looked so much more beautiful when she smiled anyway, so I suggested she learn to smile more often and she agreed that doing that would be a good idea. But she needed my help. To cue her to remember to smile, I began a habit of smiling at her - giving her an outright huge, toothy grin or just turning up the corners of my mouth so they didn't turn down. It turned out that smiling more often actually made me feel happier too, so I kept doing it. I realize now that it's an agreement I made with my mother long ago that still persists and connects me to being her daughter. Here is a picture of me at fifty-four with that slight smile next to my brother.

Smiling more often as a matter of course has had an unexpected effect on others...

Many years ago when I first came to Hawaii, I was invited to this birthday party for someone I didn't know, because I was connected to a band member of the party gal. Most of the people at the party were younger than me. They seemed to be talking about who they knew, how cool they were (or how afraid they were not so cool) and what clothes the others were wearing. They weren't particularly interested in having conversations that were about ideas, languages, relationships or values, which were my favorite subjects. So I spent my time playing with the kids and the household dogs, randomly smiling to recognize people passing by as I wandered around the party. They put up an open mike for musicians to share their original music, so for the birthday girl I sang the Bolinas version of an original "Happy Birthday" written by Ananda Gino Brady.

At the end of the night while driving home, my friend who had invited me said he didn't understand how I could be so completely misunderstood by strangers. When I asked him what he meant, he said someone had asked him if I was a special needs person. Evidently those twenty-somethings believed that if you were smiling too often, there had to be something seriously wrong with your sanity.


But wait! I have yet another story about this...

In San Francisco, people who are special needs adults go out together in a group. Along with them comes one or two workers who are paid to chaperone and generally make sure the group doesn't get into trouble.

I was standing at the corner waiting for a bus in S.F. when this sort of group joined me to also board the bus. People of all walks of life take the bus in San Francisco, because of the parking difficulties. I was heading for a music lesson, so I wasn't carrying a pack or purse.

All of us got on the bus together, and I took the only available seat next to one of the special needs people. We began to talk. I guess I encouraged rambunctious replies because their "handler" asked for quiet and to stay in their seats. I apologized and stated that it was my fault to have encouraged the intensity of response. After some time had passed, a metal water container made it out of the pack of one of the members of the special needs group and rolled two seats away back into the depths of the lurching bus. Since I knew all of them were barred against fetching it, I asked the person in the seat in back of me to please hand it forward so it could be returned to the owner. There was no response, so I got up and retrieved the item before it caused a problem.

In a short time, the correct stop came and the special needs group disembarked. I slid over to a window seat that was now unoccupied and glanced back to the woman behind me who had ignored my request previously to help retrieve the water bottle.

She had a red face to match her red hair. She gushed, "I'm so sorry that I assumed you were one of them."

"Yes," I agreed, attempting some humor. "It's embarrassing when you realize you've treated special people in special ways. I like to be especially smiley. Sometimes it makes people think I'm special."

"Well, the good kind of special then," she grinned. She nervously laughed with me.

We talked a bit more about how smiling affects people. I told her the story of my smiling agreement with my mom. She declared that maybe she would smile more often too.

Real Natural

Do you have a claim to fame?

It's one of my standard fallback questions that I developed from my days of hitchhiking in the quest of becoming an entertaining conversationalist. If the person can say yes to this question, it never fails to yield an interesting tale about who they are and what has been important to them.

A former teacher of mine is someone who claims he's the inspiration for the character made famous by R. Crumb in the hippie comics era. In fact, he even changed his name legally to become Mr. Natural. This confounds those who have him fill out forms because his first name is Mr.  That's right - not Mister, but Mr. with a period.


But Mr. Natural as a real person has further claims to fame beyond his name and how he became famous for having assumed it. For instance, under his previous name, he personally fought and he won a case as that shaped landlord/tenant rights in San Francisco.

Natural has written a book about his own way of teaching music. It's a sort of reverse engineered jazz theory for beginners based on "do-re-mi..."  He and his business partner Angel have published a pretty easy-to-understand disambiguation of a college level music theory course called "Music Theory Decoded - Strictly by the Numbers". He's uploaded many group courses on music from classes he recorded and put on youtube for many instruments. He even invented a short-cut for composers to sketch their musical ideas before the song makes it into notation that's an improvement on what's known as "Nashville Notation."

 So - do you have a claim to fame?
If you don't yet, what would it be when your ship comes in?

Touchy

 I used to feel self-righteous about the level that my culture doesn't want to touch each other - almost to the point of "forcing" or "training" people to allow me to touch them and to invite being touched. I wrote a bit about that on my other more public blog. 

There were many other actions I did that violated people's cultural expectations about autonomy, independence, personal space and respect that I needed to become aware of and problem solve.  Lots of times, who I was trying to change showed me their sharp teeth and I had to learn not to take it personally. I've had to learn so much about body language to be able to deal with feeling rejected, isolated and misunderstood. For instance, being near-sighted and not comfortable with glasses or contacts, I tended to stand too close to people when talking, encouraging them to back away from me or flee during a conversation.

When I finally gave in and accepted that it was OK that people in my culture did not want to be touched, I think others lost out on the value I could offer them about the importance of being touched. But they didn't seem to want it.

It happened at the point where the mother of my stepson gave me this little talk about how the people closest to children are the ones who are most likely to be sexually molesting them. She got it from the news, so I could have merely cast it off as a fad. But I couldn't help but take what she had said personally. Because it resulted in her son no longer wanting to enjoy being read to while sitting in my lap, or hang out with the family and friends on the couch draped over each other. It was as if his mother was, in a roundabout way, trying to accuse me personally of molesting her six year old son by cautioning him not to trust people about an issue which he had no clue what it meant at the time. It really made me angry. But it also made me realize how an accusation like that is pretty much the same as a conviction. So I decided to let sleeping dogs lie and stop trying to get people to touch each other more often. I think my decision at that time was a mistake, in retrospect.

But I'm still on the fence whether it's a good thing to be "training" people to accept being touched - or to just accept them the way they are. In the last year, I have been adopted by a stray cat who doesn't like being picked up. But over time, he's learned to accept me doing that for him to hoist him up to where he gets fed, without scratching me. I reason that some day, I'm going to have to pick him up when he's upset and I don't want him to freak out and attack me. But it's really just that I like his fuzzy ass in my arms and I like enjoying his trust. It's a bit like that with my friends too.

Recluse

There are many reasons why a person ends up being alone. Some of them are negative, and some are positive, and some are accidental, and some of these choices happened "accidentally on purpose."

Sometimes you make choices to do what you think you want to do, and only later find out that you've inadvertently chosen to do it all by yourself after you're entirely committed. If you think about how long it takes to get exactly what you want, how long people work to set themselves up for retirement - it's a long haul. Most people don't know what they're going to do with themselves when they retire because they never had a chance to do what they loved to do - or they're not able to reinvent themselves.

Sometimes it is just that we cannot "sell" to others our desire to have things the way we want. There has to exist someone else who wants share that situation with us, and that is sometimes a tall order if our dreams are unique. Or sometimes, we end up alone because there is something we do that is not socially acceptable to others who would usually want to hang out with us - too much "baggage."

I am overwhelmed with how many of my peers have become alcoholic as they age - probably somewhat because "it doesn't matter now." Some people go through a process of "giving up" (sometimes necessary) without ever coming out on the other side of it to understand what they positively do want. Some just decide not to bother learning anything new and get along with what they have. For them, it's just too much trouble to feel like you don't know what you're doing. This is one example of circumstantial isolation. If you don't change with the times, you get left behind. And possibly disillusioned about what you believe is not possible now.

Relationships teach you about yourself. (At least, that is how they have always worked for me.) In a way, it's expending less effort to be alone. All those character defects that are irritating to someone else don't matter when you're alone. Nobody else is there to accept the consequence except you. If you're OK with what you do, you can have things be any way you want. Of course, some older folks get very "set in their ways." But think of the advantages, you don't have to explain or apologize about the way you are, how you work, why you do what do. There is nobody to answer to. Being alone is both an advantage, and a disadvantage.


Someone asked an old woman past 100 what is the best part of being old - and she said, "No peer pressure."

Lightly skipped over by most is underestimating the power of a significant booby prize that is the strangest feature of being lucky enough to get old. Watching those twenty, thirty, forty year friendships dissolve or suddenly disappear is not for sissies.

I don't know what your experience with death and the process of grieving is, but in my peer group - people do not want to hang around someone who is grieving. Oh, after someone dies, people will gather to console one another and commemorate, but then, they go away. They don't call, they don't make contact again for another...three months or so. Then it's only a light check-in.

Somehow the person who is grieving is supposed to "get over it" or "deal with it." Most of your friends will get tired of hearing about how you feel when you miss someone who has died. This distaste perhaps reminds them of how they have trouble thinking about their own death. Maybe it's just too close to how unpleasant it would be to be the one who is left after best friends and lovers are gone - as you are now. It's as if grief is a state of social quarantine.

There isn't much social support either for accepting each person's unique process of going through their own grief. Instead of recognizing that grief is a special time of self-knowledge, if the process of grieving goes on "too long," it is labeled "depression."

It's not depression, it's grieving - but this is the cloak that society wraps it in. This mistaken label for grieving as "depression," is yet another very good reason for circumstantial isolation. 

Relationship Stages

 

Personal Relationship Stages
 

 

 

 

An interesting view, that relationships have stages. Regarding the few intimate relationships I've had, would say the stages are:

• 1. Who is this person? What might we do together as a team?
  
  
• 2. Wow, this is wonderful. I'll do anything for her/him.
  
  
• 3. Wait a minute. Is what I'm doing to demonstrate love working how it's intended? Maybe this needs a bit of investigation and adjustment so the demonstrations I contribute to create love in the relationship goes where there are intended. In return, what I allow them to do for me also constructively floats my boat.
  
  
• 4. Trades, offerings and tacit agreements evolve and are enjoyed or endured.
  
  
• 5. A way to update these agreements becomes necessary. Whether agreements are made tacitly, verbally, as trades or as "standing" agreements - is everyone on the same page about what the agreement is? Who does what for whom and who gets to wait for their desires/needs to be met, and how long do they wait? Does the "waitee" ever get what it is they want/need? Can agreements-customs be changed or updated as various member's needs change? For instance, if one of the members of the relationship gets injured and needs care to heal from the other(s), can the relationship be flexible enough to provide that care and later re-establish independence after healing without breaking apart?
  
  
• 6. Over time, everyone's challenges, shortcomings, strengths and/or style or preferences become familiar. Can each member accept the person's intent to do their best in bettering their character flaws, or accept these flaws? How to support and/or encourage improvement of personal character development and learning? How does each member "help" one another? Do the agreements that have evolved merely adjust and compensate for shortcomings? Or is there a recognition of a process that improvement is also evolving? Can personal change be accommodated? The answers to these questions makes or breaks the relationship.
  
  
• 7. If a "break" is happening, character flaws are assigned the role of punishment. It would be so nicer for ME if the person improved - they must not love me enough to improve themselves and make it easier on both of us. Mountain out of molehill sensitivity develops, noting the most minuscule expression of these character flaws in spite of ongoing improvement. The relationship must end; the pressure of having someone so invested in your shortcomings or successes is too pressurized.
  
  
• 7. a. From my own experience, the way out of this is to re-prioritize the constant recognition of the objectionable behavior(s.) Make a specific time to express objections all at once, (without defense is best) instead of constantly having uncontrolled emotional reactions come up all the time. Meanwhile, constructively rebuild the relationship based on enjoyable, bonded experiences so the enjoyment of being together is renewed.
  
  
• 7. b. Of course, if you work this out, you can start new projects together. If you don't navigate this stage very well, the two of you part ways, with various clean-up work ahead. Or you get so damaged that making further agreements are impaired,  but you keep going anyway.
  
  
• 8. I've heard after twenty years together, the partners change places in what their shortcomings have become. The shortcomings and complaints each used to have about the other swings in the opposite direction...sort of hilarious!
  
  
• 9. But by now, there's been some track record of getting past difficult times and hopefully, communication skills have increased well enough to continue indefinitely. Unless significant lifestyle changes intervene that make a liaison no longer possible for various practical reasons... But some relationships can spend time apart and get back together ongoing.
  

Being Santa

When I was a teen, my boyfriend's family in San Diego had adopted a Mexican family from Tijuana to be the recipient of their donations. I was the first person who could translate between the two families and got to hear an interesting story.

It all started when the San Diego family had bought a used car and wanted to fix it up and sell it to make a little money. They found this shop over teh border where eleven kids were running around. The mechanic did an excellent job on the car, and later an excellent job redoing the interior - the reconditioning was perfect. After realizing the poverty level of the Mexican family, the family from San Diego decided to buy another car and this time give all the money they made on the sale of the car after it was fixed to the mechanic and his family.

They did this multiple times.

It took the sale of four cars for the mechanic and his family to figure out what was going on. Each time the San Diego family came with another car and some money, the mechanic assumed that as a customer, they wanted an even BETTER and more expensive job fixing up the car they had brought. ...While the family from San Diego just wanted to give the Mexican family some money that represented their true efforts from the sale of the cars on the other side of the border.



Hope that you're in a position to make someone's life better this Holiday season!

Animal Portraits!

Do you have a favorite kitty or canine? Send me a picture and I'll apply my artistry... It's not expensive - Only $100. per drawing, unframed. You'll have a lasting keepsake of your charming, loyal or playful animal companion.

Worried Today, Time to Make Art

Thinking of what to do to improve the level of my own happiness today. I'm worried today because money to pay rent hasn't appeared on the horizon. Realized that making art has worked for me before when I've felt like a deer in the headlights, so decided to draw a picture of a kitty who was nice enough to tame herself so I could be her friend.

Shared her with Janet after I began a mobile lifestyle, so I even have corroboration about how unusual this kitty truly was. This pussycat became my icon for the proof that a specific character could surpass the character traits of her species. In her case, she was thoughtful and compassionate about others, when felines are known for being completely and shamelessly self-involved. I wrote about her story previously here.

Her name was "Squeeker," affectionately known as, "Ms. Vanilla."

Most Magnanimous Kitty - Ever

All my cats have had "theme songs," usually parodies.

Squeeker's theme song is sung to the tune of

"Look At That Stupid Girl" by the Rolling Stones.

~I'm not talkin' about the cutest squeak she has.... 

~ Look at that fluffy kitty

~ I'm not talkin' about the ever-wafting baths... 

~ Look at that fluffy kitty

~ The way she packs a punch

~ Poor mice fast become her lunch

~ To me the sweetest cat in the world

~ Greet that fluffy kitty!

~ I'm not talking about the kind of dust she wears

~ Check out that fluffy kitty...

~ I'm not talkin' about the twisted fang she bears

~ Look out for that fluffy kitty...

~ The way she bathes her friends

~ Her peace-makin' never ends

~ Her lack of vanity plus times ten

~ Gotta pet that fluffy kitty!

Success Wreck

Yes, I've had emotional train wrecks just after major successes as many other people experience. Feels like a tsunami rolling over me at best. Had to take some time to re-group and think carefully about how to provide for my own needs and desires, hopes and fears. This was often days of time.

In order to get some freedom, I seemed to be capable of pretending that I was smart; or at least it seemed to me that I wasn't as smart as others considered me to be. When growing up, every once in awhile I'd get a teacher who was smart enough to use what I had to offer. They must have been wise enough to understood some of why I was acting the way I did.

For instance, my Spanish teacher in middle school was brilliant. It didn't matter to her that having eaten breakfast made me fall sleep during her class every day. She was smart enough to observe that I would soak up everything that was going on around me in this half-asleep state. It was fine with her that she had to call my name to wake me; then she'd repeat her request that she was passing around the room for everyone to answer. The test was that I had the answer that would satisfy her criteria. She was so kind to not penalize me in any way for sleeping with my head on my desk.

Every once in awhile she would give me something interesting to do that would keep me awake enough; the job of making flash cards for the class - or tutoring my classmates who were slower to learn. By the time I had spent three years in her class - I was completely fluent and could think and even tell jokes in Spanish. I joke now that I've forgotten many Spanish words... but the truth of the matter is it comes back to me when I go to Mexico. Pretty much I can tell what someone is talking about in Spanish, but not what they're saying about until I hit the books a bit again.

I knew where this wound came from in my past, but that didn't help much figuring out how to get past it. When I was a kid in the 1950s, I studied tap dancing at a gym - it was also a place where kids got rewarded (with the equivalent of twenty bucks now) the first time they could walk across the length of the gym on their hands. Had a funny flash-back that seemed to be lodged into my body when I attended a stretching class thirty years later as I bent backwards into what is called a "bridge" to "spider-walk" - walk on one's hands and feet belly-up, back arched with one's head hanging upside-down and backwards. As a five year old, I was such a fast learner of routines in the gym and dance classes that the teachers put me at the head of the troupe and had the other kids to just follow my excellent memory.

The problem happened at a huge group recital. Some other kids not in my group sat in the wrong line. When the line of my group was called me and a couple others in my troupe who were supposed to be at the head of the group did not get to go out on stage. I was completely crushed that I'd been pumped up about how important my role was as leader and then no grownup noticed I was not at the head of my group to perform. How important could I be if I was not even missed?

The event producers offered to let me go out on stage with the other two kids in my troupe, but I could not stop crying. My mom even stuck me into the car and drove me around the block to try to calm me down. She tried to give me a pep talk that I was doing what actresses do - throw a fit when I had been short-changed. I had been successful and now it was time for the show to go on. But it didn't work because I had not had any practice in calming myself down after being really upset. I had never gotten so freaked out and disappointed in my sweet, short life before.

I recognized myself in a scene of the movie "Wave Rider." A young girl works hard and skillfully to prove to her grandfather she is qualified to be the spiritual leader of her community. But he refuses to allow her recognition because of her gender. She successfully fulfills many trials, in spite of being spurned, and she is even actively prevented from learning by being excluded from her grandfather's classes - for boys only. In one scene, she has learned complex Maori chants and performs them with tears streaming down her face, in spite of the fact that her grandfather has refused to attend her performance.

For some reason, the producers of that even long ago would not allow me as a forgotten performer to express myself by crying while dancing. Why not? Where is this rule that performers must be happy?

The movie does not go into why the Wave Rider protagonist cannot give up the role she is meant to play for her people. But this is what I need to know - for myself. How can persist and continue to fulfill the role I know I am supposed to play without allowing setbacks to prevent me from eventual success?

Anyone who does not fit into the mold that language usage or culture has established to be "normal" is left to flounder - this is just as true for people who are good looking, talented and smart as well as those who are on the other end of the social spectrum.

Part of being an adult to know what it is you need and go out and provide it for yourself. My own secret has been to figure out how to ask for or get what I needed in other ways, other avenues that did not excite societal reactions, to sneak under the radar...to go in the back door rather than the front door.

I'm not sure that this "back door approach" will work for me in the future. Self-doubt has reared its ugly head for me.

My First Sub-Culture Artist Friend

When I was twelve I used to make art at a table where each of us who shared the table was from a different race or culture. We joked that we all made "highly integrated" art. My art table friend was American Indian girl, who encouraged me to follow her home one day after school.

When we arrived, her whole family (seven more people) were sitting on two couches that faced each other. No other furniture except a lamp, a TV on a table in the corner and a coffee table. The TV wasn't on.

I sat down, squishing myself in where they made room for me to sit as she did. She introduced me to her family. We giggled a little about something that had happened at school that day. The conversation died down. I asked what the dog's name was after some time had gone by. Another five minutes went by. Her family members told me the story, a sentence at a time from almost every person there, about how the dog arrived and came to be adopted into the family. Another long silence.

I looked at everyone. They didn't seem to be expecting anything from me, so I just sat there. We sat for about a half hour. Her mom got up and offered us all iced tea because it was hot. We drank the tea and rattled the ice cubes together. Nobody said anything for the next half hour.

Then as if on some cue, everyone got up. We said goodbye to each other and they asked me to come back again and visit. They said they really enjoyed meeting me and was looking forward to seeing me again. They were happy their daughter had such an interesting friend. I wasn't really sure why they thought I was interesting. Then I walked home, feeling lucky I'd just been in another world where I could be interesting for just sitting on a couch keeping my mouth shut.

I kept making art with her and hanging out with her at school and lunchtime, but I couldn't figure out a reason to come back to visit her at her house and she did not press me to return. She said everyone she brought over to her house did not feel very comfortable there. I wanted to be different, but at the time it was just too strange for me too. I'd never traveled before and didn't really understand that I was going to a different culture when I was really just visiting that house down the street.