Honey, I've shrunk!
In America, things are BIGGER or I am smaller. It feels like it's both. The standard milk container is one gallon (3.6L), great big fuel-guzzling cars fill the roads, and our apartment came with super-sized appliances ( the fridge, stove, washing machine, tumble drier are all gigantic). Wholefood chickens are about three times the size of Woolworths (ostensibly regular chickens and not turkey-cross). Cooldrink bottles are bigger and the standard beer can is double ours. Are Americans also taller than South Africans? It feels that way. But also, I feel smaller. I suppose it's being less connected to the place. No network of friends that extends my arms, and interlinks my lives with theirs. No colleagues yet who rely on me, and me on them. Connectedness will come and for now, it feels a bit like I am adrift, but in a good way. It is as if the feeling of being smaller is also of being freer, of being lighter? Freedom to move in different ways, like the smaller fragments of DNA