Today was a FULL day! Whew! I got to adventure into the “big city” today for some supplies for packing our office while I am gone. It’s almost comical to me how busy streets stress me out now! I realized a few times that I was tensing up in traffic and it made me laugh. The small town life has been good to me in many ways. There is still SO much to write about, but this blog will have to continue after Africa. I don’t know exactly how much longer I will be in Hamilton when I return, but unfortunately it won’t be past June. So I will soak up the stillness, the beautiful greenery, and random dogs for now.
Speaking of dogs, I have an update on coco. His owners are trying to get him to stop coming around other people’s yards. Good luck with that! Every dog here roams except for my friend’s three dogs who…have a fence!!! Poor Coco…he just wants love…but his jumping and biting do get old :) yes he is a part of my day to day as Walmart is. I think this week I’ve only been there 3 times :-) hey hey!!
I can not believe that I have not included the one key famous aspect of the small town southern living! That is that practically everyone here has a porch and chairs to sit on that porch!! I have never been able to take pictures of my favories either because people are sitting outside, or the porches are too far away to sneak up and take a picture of. However I attached pictures below of just one street in Hamilton. It is not remotely the culture in Tulsa to sit our on your front porch. Matter of fact, I can only think of a handful of homes that even have a porch to sit on. Sometimes there are couches, weird benches, odd arrangement of sitting furniture, but there is almost always a chair. You can always tell when someone doesn’t live there because …yep you guessed it there are no chairs! It is part of the inviting “my door is always open” culture. I remember sitting down here this summer on the front porch of where I was staying just because there was a swing. When you have a porch and you are in the country, you do want to sit outside. I can also identify my neighbors that are young adults like myself who were not raised here because they do not have chairs either haha! Of course, as typical small town fashion, you must wave wheb you drive by and someone is out front. Tis the ways of the south!
Well the squirrel that I posted a picture of yesterday was mysteriously gone by the time I left work today. This is only worth mentioning because it had been there ALL day at the end of our driveway. I called my co-worker a squirrel killer because she had left before me yesterday. It’s so gross though…random dead animal on the road.
Well once I wake up tomorrow morning I will be one day closer to another culture shock and that of Africa!