Eek, it's December. I didn't even get a couple days to breathe before people started sending me emails and requests to do things, either.
As you can tell, I didn't manage to finish the remaining section of my observations about my trip to the Dominican Republic. That's going to end up as a bonus entry at some point soon, rather than one of my scheduled updates. The reason...
I'm not handling the transition back to the US well. Chris wasn't even phased, as far as I can tell. But I was. The food was the first issue, I think. The morning after we got back, we had brunch at a restaurant we like. I had the offering that is both delicious and contains carrots and broccoli. Like most restaurant offerings, it also sadly contained a high amount of processed sugar. Despite it being a savory dish.
I left the restaurant in an ill mood, and proceeded to be crabby for the next half week. I'm not sure I'm much better today, but, as is the story of my life, that's just too bad. Things to be done.
I've heard of this sort of thing before, and seen myself have poor physiological and psychological reactions to lots of sugar. This is, however, the first time I'd seen it on regular foods. I hadn't really expected it, since the resort we were at tried to serve a lot of standard American foods. Meat-heavy, almost no vegetables, but things like pizza, pasta, steak, chicken and turkey cuts, etc. Pretty basic stuff, right? Well, so what I recognized but didn't factor in, was that all their base ingredients are different. They don't import, say, flour or sugar, from the US. They use what they have there. Which is perfectly edible, just not processed in the same way. They're more likely to use brown sugar than processed white sugar. And y'know, not put it into literally everything, like in the US. If it's a savory dish, it probably doesn't have sugar in it.
The end result is food that is tasty, but doesn't taste exactly like you expect pizza or pasta or chicken to taste. Which I stopped being disappointed about within the first week, because given the number of people they have to feed at any given time, I was impressed even some of the food was completely delicious. Then I returned to the magical land where everything is chocked full of sugar forever, and now my system is having a hissy fit.
So the food is the first transition. The weather is the obvious second. The area of the Dominican Republic we visited? It's a very rare, chilly day when it gets below 77F. I live in Michigan. We routinely get down to the 20s and 10s in winter. It's grey and cold for 3-6 months out of the year. Specifically, starting about November. Sometimes October. Climate change has thrown a wrench in that pattern, so we may see sunshine here and there. But fact remains, it was literally 50 degrees (F) colder than where we'd left. And, y'know, completely grey. Punta Cana wasn't a flawlessly sunny paradise, but it did have blue in the skies most days at times, even whilst pouring rain from being in proximity to a tropical storm. And sunshine.
By the way, it snowed several inches a couple days ago.
So between the gut-issues and the weather, I'm kinda dragging my feet and trying not to bite peoples' heads off. I'm out of buffer on my blog, so I need to get in gear regardless of how bad I feel, though. Wish me luck!
As you can tell, I didn't manage to finish the remaining section of my observations about my trip to the Dominican Republic. That's going to end up as a bonus entry at some point soon, rather than one of my scheduled updates. The reason...
I'm not handling the transition back to the US well. Chris wasn't even phased, as far as I can tell. But I was. The food was the first issue, I think. The morning after we got back, we had brunch at a restaurant we like. I had the offering that is both delicious and contains carrots and broccoli. Like most restaurant offerings, it also sadly contained a high amount of processed sugar. Despite it being a savory dish.
I left the restaurant in an ill mood, and proceeded to be crabby for the next half week. I'm not sure I'm much better today, but, as is the story of my life, that's just too bad. Things to be done.
I've heard of this sort of thing before, and seen myself have poor physiological and psychological reactions to lots of sugar. This is, however, the first time I'd seen it on regular foods. I hadn't really expected it, since the resort we were at tried to serve a lot of standard American foods. Meat-heavy, almost no vegetables, but things like pizza, pasta, steak, chicken and turkey cuts, etc. Pretty basic stuff, right? Well, so what I recognized but didn't factor in, was that all their base ingredients are different. They don't import, say, flour or sugar, from the US. They use what they have there. Which is perfectly edible, just not processed in the same way. They're more likely to use brown sugar than processed white sugar. And y'know, not put it into literally everything, like in the US. If it's a savory dish, it probably doesn't have sugar in it.
The end result is food that is tasty, but doesn't taste exactly like you expect pizza or pasta or chicken to taste. Which I stopped being disappointed about within the first week, because given the number of people they have to feed at any given time, I was impressed even some of the food was completely delicious. Then I returned to the magical land where everything is chocked full of sugar forever, and now my system is having a hissy fit.
So the food is the first transition. The weather is the obvious second. The area of the Dominican Republic we visited? It's a very rare, chilly day when it gets below 77F. I live in Michigan. We routinely get down to the 20s and 10s in winter. It's grey and cold for 3-6 months out of the year. Specifically, starting about November. Sometimes October. Climate change has thrown a wrench in that pattern, so we may see sunshine here and there. But fact remains, it was literally 50 degrees (F) colder than where we'd left. And, y'know, completely grey. Punta Cana wasn't a flawlessly sunny paradise, but it did have blue in the skies most days at times, even whilst pouring rain from being in proximity to a tropical storm. And sunshine.
By the way, it snowed several inches a couple days ago.
So between the gut-issues and the weather, I'm kinda dragging my feet and trying not to bite peoples' heads off. I'm out of buffer on my blog, so I need to get in gear regardless of how bad I feel, though. Wish me luck!
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