Foreigners in the frost

This picture was taken last week at the Marble Arch in London. 

Fun dresses, tights, and jackets that are promising of spring.

Y'all, it was (kinda) sunny with a high of 55. What more could a island girl want on for her birthday celebrations? (Besides the birds to go a way. Nobody likes a park pigeon.)

Well, my birthday came and went - and with it, the warmth fled.
It's a wind chill of 15 degrees Fahrenheit. I don't even know what that means. There is snow and hail and I am starting to doubt that global warming is an actual problem. Please, Globe, please do warm, and do it quickly.

It's supposed to be 90 back home in Cali this week. Half of me thinks "Well, I'll take the snow and the sleet over heatstroke" while the other part of me longs to be back in the sunshine and hot, dry air of the foothills. Back to the warm smiles and familiar faces and long afternoons sitting on the Walk with a reading list and a notebook. Back to In-N-Out, authentic Mexican cuisine, and a stove that reads on the familiar Fahrenheit rather than gas marks. A place where I am not constantly translating temperatures and currencies and distances and pronunciations or cultural norms in my head.

Sometimes I think I am not cut out for this whole "world traveler" thing.

But maybe that's the point.
I am not a worldly traveler, defined by the foods and accents and tourist hot-spots of a new place.
My expeditions are defined by the people I meet. The neighbor that laughs when we try to say his name. The new friends at the dinner table who do not understand why we always ask for the salt. The student who reads economics (as the Oxfordians say) and does not understand why I believe in an economy of mercy, but will stay up late at night to hear about it in my living room. The pastor who picked his whole life up from the sunny land that I love and came to a country so desolate and dry, searching for a God that they did not know the name of; a God that makes all of their magical history, military success, and beautiful buildings look like rubbish. Maybe He's the One I am meeting the most.

And suddenly, it doesn't feel so cold.