Grandma's Trip to America

It's no surprise, but there are no garbage trucks that come through the village each week picking up trash that neatly lines the boulevards. Instead everyone just burns their trash whenever and wherever. Obviously burning trash is not ideal, but unfortunately there is no other efficient way to get rid of it. I have an area behind my house designated for burning trash and every once in awhile Grandma comes over and burns it for me. Burning plastic bottles and such is obviously bad news all around, so at some point during the past 2 years, I figured out that I can give all of my recyclables to Grandma's family and they call some guy who comes and buys it from them to recycle. It's great because Grandma's family has a little extra money and it's good for the environment.

Over the 2 years, my parents have been amazing about sending care packages, more care packages than I can even count. One of the precious items includes magazines - The Economist, People, Time, etc. Well, over 2 years I had quite a build up and I wasn't really sure what to do with the stacks of magazines that were taking over my house. I was starting to feel like one of those crazy hoarders. Then recently it dawned on me that Grandma could sell all the magazines too, so I hauled over boxes of magazines from January 2009 and onward.

And this simple activity turned Grandma's world upside down and inside out. I often forget how small her world is; she has never left the village and has very little grasp of her own country, let alone the United States. Well, these magazines allowed her to travel all the way to America without leaving the village and peak into a world unknown to her. She was thoroughly and completely flabbergasted and amazed at what these magazines showed her. She sat on her wooden platform for 3-4 hours flipping through the magazines. Occasionally I would pop out there and she would ask me questions ranging from are there really Asian people in America to why iced tea jugs are so huge. Some of her questions came across as almost racist, but she has never left the village and I'm the first foreigner she has ever met, so her questions were very genuine and sincere. She was amazed at pictures of older people and how they had such nice skin and white teeth; she didn't understand how people with gray hair could look so nice.

Usually she calls the recycle guy right away to collect plastic bottles and such, but these magazines stuck around for quite a few days so that she could fully take in all that these magazines had to offer. Since she will never actually be able to travel, I'm happy that I could at least provide her a token plane ticket to catch a glimpse of what my life in America looks like.