Only in… Part II

 

…Michigan.

On the way to the MBS airport , in the middle of the day on a Tuesday, it had begun to snow pretty heavily. We were driving down a neighborhood road close to home. At the end of the driveway of a house, there were two men standing, watching another man on a four-wheeler with a plow attached to the front. The men watching were both skinny and had donned hats and coats. The man on the four-wheeler was about 150lbs over weight and was wearing only bright red sweatpants, a hoodless gray sweatshirt, and untied boots with the tongues hanging out and the sweatpants tucked into the tops. The snow hadn't actually accumulated that much, so I'm not sure what they were doing with the "plow". Probably just grown-up boys having fun in the snow. I wonder if they wished they could make a snow fort with that thing.

…LA.

I've got two for this one: While I was sitting in the coffee shop (see previous post) I saw a 20-something woman walk by with her dog. She was radiating a very calculated "I just got out of bed and don't care what I look like" look. Her dark hair was in a ponytail and strands of it were strategically pulled out to get the "tousled" look. She was wearing ugg slippers, tight fitting jeans and a blue sweatshirt. Her slimness wasn't exactly proportional, making it obvious that she had gone under the knife at least once in her lifetime. In one hand was the pink leash for her dog (I'd like to say it was a chihuahua in a sweat suit to paint the perfect picture, but it was actually just a medium sized, naked mutt.) In the other hand was an environmentally friendly, to-go coffee cup. In the words of some 1920's author which I vaguely remember: "there's nothing like being picturesque!"

The next day, I was walking down the street peeking in some of the local shops…knitting stores, used book stores, gourmet cupcake shoppes, etc. I passed one called Zinnia's and decided to go in. From the outside it looked like a trendy gift store. Walking around I soon realized that it was a store selling things of absolutely no value whatsoever. There was a big table with cute trays filled with what I first thought were beads, but were actually just pieces of plastic that were in fact eye-catching, but had no holes. The next tray over was random Scrabble letters; the next, pieces of children's blocks cut into small pieces; the next, assorted keys with no locks; the next, mismatched buttons; and the next, wheels from toy cars. On a shelf were vases filled with pipe cleaners. Next to the shelf, on the wall, were mounted spools of colored plastic string. I couldn't find a single thing in the store that could actually be used for anything except for maybe use in a Martha Stewart type crafting activity or to picture in the "O" magazine. I will admit though, everything was fun to look at.

…DC.

Unfortunately most of my time spent in DC was spent sleeping/shivering on the floor of an airport terminal so I have nothing to report on here. Although I do recommend the Dulles Dunkin' Donuts!

…Rwanda

One of my first days back Jess and I were walking into town from the house we were staying at and passed a group of teenage boys hanging out on the corner…the Rwandan equivalent to hanging at the mall. One of the things I most appreciate about Rwanda is that societal expectations for dress are: 1. Dress professional when working. 2. Women should not show their knees. 3. Anything else goes. Outside of Kigali, there's very little pressure on teenagers to dress a certain way. And these boys on the corner were a case in point. One was standing next to a bike. He was wearing a hot pink, girl's polo shirt. Another had on a girl's winter jacket with a fur-lined hood. On him it looked like a very warm belly shirt. A third had on a yellow mesh tank top. What was so great about the situation is that when we walked by they started laughing at us. I guess we looked weird.

Anyone else have any "only in…"s yet?