Post by Lara
21 October 2012
Things that we had in Ohio that we don’t have in Salone:
- A refrigerator and freezer that held about a month’s supply of food
- Potable running water and a water heater
- 5 ice cream shops within walking distance (about ½ mile radius) from our house
- High-speed internet in our house and wi-fi in many public places
- An electric kettle that boiled water in about a minute
- A car. Also on this point, roads that allowed us to drive about 60 miles in about an hour. That same distance takes 2-28 hours here, depending on how rugged your car is and what condition the roads are in (and whether you have to stay at a friend’s house overnight waiting for a replacement vehicle to come).
- Air conditioning. Oddly, we don’t miss this nearly as much as we expected we might.
- Family and friends in the same time zone (Pat- we’re glad to have you still!) and cell phone plans that allowed us to text and talk to many of them for free.
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| Kevin's family (March 2012) |
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| Lara's Family (May 2012) |
- A clothesline—always meant to put one up but never did (we had some burnt-out Christmas lights that we hung our hand-washed things on though)
- Neighbors who bring us food every day and help us finish household chores
- Tropical fruit galore- guava is one of the best things I’ve ever tasted, and everyone here raves about mango season. All those things arrive in Ohio under-ripe and are never quite as flavorful there as they are in their native environment.
- The. Best. Bananas. I. Have. Ever. Tasted. [Also- at least 4 varieties. Yes, bananas come in different forms. They’re all delicious]
- Tailors who will sew an outfit specifically for us [on a foot-pedal sewing machine, by the way] for less than it usually costs to buy an outfit from a secondhand clothes shop here. My last outfit- skirt, top, and head wrap, cost less than $15, fabric and workmanship combined.
- Time—Time to read the books we never read, to paint our house, to brush the leaves from our yard almost every day, to make our own candles out of wax drippings, to prepare lessons several weeks in advance, etc.
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| Lara with the kids next door (October 2012) |
Re: the fruit, I'm finding out the same thing! Fresh Hawaiian pineapple is something I can actually stand to eat. It's COMPLETELY different than canned (or what seems to come in any salad, etc. in Ohio). I also found out from my friend on Big Island that you're supposed to soak it in sea/salt water to help get rid of some of the acidity (and, I'm assuming, get kind of the swee-vs.-salty thing going on).
ReplyDeleteAlso on the Big Island there's a fruit market that, according the world's premiere banana scientist (I'm not kidding), is the only place you can get the bananas that everyone used to eat before they were threatened by disease and were switched out for the ones everyone is familiar with now. Obviously there's a pretty good chance it's not the ONLY place they're grown, but it does make sense in that they're biologically isolated. I haven't tried one yet but my goal next time I get to the Big Island is to hunt it down, because they're supposedly much more flavorful. Any idea on what kind of bananas you guys have there?