I was traveling to Harrisburg to meet some friends, and attend the wedding of one of them. Now, when I say "meet some friends" I mean that literally. We are a close-knit group who met on an internet message board, and have been close friends for several years now. However, while some of them have been able to get together in person at least once, I had never meet any of them in person. I was a wee bit nervous, but not terribly so.
One of them, C, was waiting for me in the airport. Her plane had gotten in just a little while earlier, and we shared a cab back to the hotel. We were very dissapointed that our friend AV, who was supposed to meet us there as well, had been screwed out of coming. Her United flight from LA had been delayed, so that she would miss her only connection to Harrisburg in Chicago. The wedding was in the morning, so by the time she could have caught the next flight out, she would have missed it entirely. Faced with that choice, she stayed in LA. We all missed her greatly, and will be boycotting United Airlines, who were incredibly dicks to her at the airport about her situation.
The culture shock was mild, but hapened almost immediately. The woman at the cab stand asked where we were from, and when I said Wisconsin, she asked how cold it was there. I told her that the weather was actually about the same as it was in Pennsylvania...mild Indian summer. She told me that she just thought of Wisconsin as a place full of snow. And beer. (I had to restrain myself from starting to sing a Lou and Peter Berryman song). I replied that we did indeed have good beer, good cheese, and good frozen custard, but that we didn't always have snow. She replied by asking what frozen custard was. Poor dear.
Our cab driver was certainly a character: an older black woman who kept crackiong jokes and offering us "grandmotherly" advice. While we drove, I was amused by the friendly little highway signs. "Merge safely" and "Beware of agressive drivers" put me in mind of someone's mom standing at the side of the road and telling you to be careful.
When we arrived at the hotel, most of the other girls were already there. The bride had already come and gone, since it was rather late, but everyone else was drinking champagne and enjoying the snacks that the bride and her mom had graciously left--pretzels, chips, applebutter, snickerdoodles, and a huge bag of Hersey Kisses and miniatures. The atmosphere in the suite was a little like a slumber party. One more guest arrived shortly after us, having driven in from Ohio.
Besides bringing snacks, the bride had also left each of us a little presents--we each got a gift bag with a pretty pair of silver earings. Mine had garnets. Lovely. I was touched that with all the other things on her mind before the wedding, J had taken the time to play hostess with those lovely gifts.
