Day 202 : Culture Shock

4 February 2011

Culture shock; Adj; Is the difficulty people have adjusting to a new culture that differs markedly from their own……

After leaving FTFE and Martha in Beijing in September and traveling across the African and South American continents, culture shock was the last thing I was expecting to be feeling as I walked the streets of downtown Seattle, yet undeniably I definitely felt it. Arriving in America has been like receiving a large frying pan right to the face carried by an extremely loud man who insists on shouting every time he hits you! It was certainly the wake up call I needed after taking 48 hours to travel up from Peru.

I was treated to two of the most stunningly beautiful days cloud free days that really showed off this area of Washington State in all its picture postcard glory. Seattle is said to be one of the most “liveable” cities in North America and it was hard to argue with that claim as all around the city the snow capped Olympus mountains and crystal clear waters of the puget sound glistened in the bright winter sun, and the clear mountain air made even Mount Rainier some 90 kms away seem like it was right our the city’s doorstep. Sunset here on a good day is something you must see to believe!

Finding out that Martha was to arrive into port at Grays Harbor on Friday gave us all a day together to get some serious admin work done for FTFE as well as a chance to see some of the sights of “The Emerald City”. I certainly couldn’t have picked two more contrasting stages of FTFE as the remoteness and solitude of traveling through Kazakhstan and Mongolia has been replaced by actually generating some serious awareness of what we are doing through contacting local and national media in each city that Martha stops in.

Amy was a trouper in contacting all the news channels and papers in the Seattle area, Steve was busy working with customs and getting comms up and running in America while I was left in charge of finding some accommodation for our next destination, Vancouver Canada… and to make the coffee (I’m just getting used to working again).

Friday was an early start to pick a car up that we could drive to Grays Harbor to Meet Martha. Unfortunately the weather had turned for the worse and the bright sunshine of the previous days was now replaced by the sort of English drizzle that gets you soaked through every piece of clothing you have.

Thanks to some amazing work from ICS Customs at Global Link who sent one of their top executives in advance to finalise our customs paper work for Martha, we were standing by her in the driving rain of terminal 4 in no time. This is however where the fun was just beginning today. We were hitting Tacoma and Seattle rush hour traffic at night, in the rain and with a Sat Nav that seem to be amazing at arguing with itself every 5 minutes as to which route to take. This, added together with the fact I hadn’t driven Martha for about 5 months, made the drive to the border as challenging as you would want as a welcome back present!

We eventually rolled up to the Canadian border at around 11pm. Perhaps it was the long drive or the air of invincibility we seem to have inside Martha but we managed to completely miss getting Martha and her carnet stamped out America before entering Canada. And so it wasn’t long before we were turned around and making our way back to the American “commercial” port of exit to get stamped out officially (there’s only about 20,000 pounds riding on it!)

Needless to say what followed was 3 hours of frustrating back and forth between 2 borders that seemingly didn’t really know how to deal with us again (I thought after Russia we would be finished with all of this!) The video diary of this border crossing sums up best our feelings and emotions as the night rolled into the early hours of Saturday Morning. Tired, confused and hungry we officially crossed into Canada at about 1am and headed for the bright lights of Vancouver! Thank goodness for the Hi Central Vancouver http://www.hihostels.ca/westerncanada/170/HI-Vancouver_Central.hostel donating 2 rooms to us because as we hit the buzzing Granville Street at 2am all we wanted to do was sleep!!

And so tomorrow, with Ben And Rob arriving into Vancouver, Stage 7 will begin in earnest, and I for one can’t wait to get going!

Have a Nice Day Y’all!!

James

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