I got in this morning after spending the most amazing weekend in Puerto Rico. My friends and I found cheap plane tickets and took off! We drove around exploring beaches, swimming in clear blue ocean water, snorkeling alongside turtle and rays and eating mufungo, pressed french bread sandwiches and seafood. It was truly amazing.
Our flight back was a bit of a horror after some serious delays leaving us in Miami for the night in a Holiday Inn supplied by American Airlines to catch about five hours of sleep before hopping another plane back home to Chicago.
But none of that really bothered me; it was when we stopped on the pedway at Au Bon Pain for some soup heading back towards our office in the Prudential Plaza that I truly felt annoyed. Trying to pick out soup from the kiosk in the middle of the restaurant, people pressed around me through our "excuse mes" and hurried side step maneuvers to get around me since I was obviously not choosing quickly enough.
The hurry of busyness of everyone around me was astonishing! It was reverse culture shock, moving at a Carribean pace in an American city. It's amazing how quickly you adapt to a new way of life that truly exposes what your original way of life means.
It's impossible to truly move slowly and survive in Chicago; this I know after two years of living here and feeling the cold lake breeze hitting my cheeks when I miss the bus or getting home an extra hour late because I dawdled and got stuck in rush hour traffic or missed the one open spot on the El. But there is little or nothing to be said for how quickly you can get a bowl of soup or who you can push past to check out fifteen seconds quicker in the line.
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