As most probably know by now, my family and I live close to the Navajo reservation in a small town in New Mexico. It's a fairly remote town, around 200 miles away from a large city, and lacking in alot of conveniences located in cities. We don't have alot of franchises in the area and local comedians refer to Walmart as being the Gallup Chapter House, where everyone congregates. Our Walmart is decidedly behind on the times. I, personally, think that most of what is offered there is at least two years old and failed to sell at other Walmarts...Even the chain stores here tend to sell different merchandise than what we find in Albuquerque, NM. There are no local tv stations or syndicated radio stations. We get only a very limited selection of movies in the two theaters in town. If I had to guess, we probably get less than 10% of movies released elsewhere. Needless to say, the community's day to day contact with the outside world is rather limited. Every couple months, my family and I try to spend a weekend in Albuquerque, New Mexico to "catch up" on what is going on with current culture. We all experience a bit of culture shock when we do this. Our trip this weekend had my 2 year old daughter in a constant state of shock and surprise every step we took--even in a shopping mall! lol We might as well be going to a foreign land on these trips.

Having grown up in a large city, changes always seemed to be rather indetectable. After living out on the Colorado Plateau for several years and getting "glimpses", the changes that have occurred are infinitely more dramatic. Even walking through a Target or a nice grocery store is mind boggling. I thought I would list a few things that we spotted that were decidedly different on our last trips to the "civilized world" as we call it.

Superbright advertisement tvs--As we came closer to Albuquerque on Friday night, we noticed that the casinos just outside of the city featured extraordinarily bright advertisement tvs the size of billboards. These things were so bright, it's kind of surprising that they are legal considering the glare bombarding highway passerbys...

Grocery carts--We live in the land of ruthlessly beat up and filthy grocery carts. I daresay that not a single grocery cart in this town has functioned properly in the last 2 years. We spotted what we feel is the luxury sports car of grocery carts at an Albuquerque grocery chain. This sleek, high basket model not only featured a built in cup holder but also tiny basket attached to the inside of the main basket, a medium sized basket under the main basket and the more common bottom rack located at the bottom of the cart. In short, a full 3 baskets and bottom rack for grocery items with a convenient cup holder. And let me say, this baby handles beautifully!! If we could've fit it in the back of our car, we would've taken it home with us. Much better than the older grocery carts we have out here...

DVD/VHS players--Gone are the four inch tall vhs/dvd players. We were shocked to see that most of the products out there were a mere 1.5-2 inch height range. We're not sure when this happened but it couldn't have been that recent as the prices are phenomenally low. A sleek 1.5 inch wide Sony vhs/dvd combination unit ran around $149. Out here, it's the 4 inch thick kind for about that price...if not more! Neat change, imo.

Department stores--We were floored walking into a Target this weekend, shocked on several counts. First of all, walking through the kitchen ware aisles was a bit of a shock. They've gone gourmet and even sushi making utensils were available there. Further wandering through the store yielded more surprises like the availability of window coverings that weren't plain blinds or regular curtains and valances. The sheer variety was astonishing. Even more astonishing was their "global market" tucked in the back of the store. Visiting Target was like going to Williams-Sonoma, Pier One and Ethan Allen all at once (with better prices to boot!). When this transition occurred, we don't know but it was impressive.

"Food Court" restaurants breaking out of the food court--We spotted a Chic-fil-a in a freestanding building. Chic-fil-a's are usually only located inside of malls, in their food courts and have been there for years. Apparently,they've broken out.

Strip malls are everywhere!-- It seemed like entire roads were composed primarily of strip malls interrupted only by gas stations and fast food places.

That's just a few observations from some "outsiders" of US culture/civilization. I'm sure that there was alot more that we missed or didn't register while being bombarded with color, bright lights and new new new. A bitter irony is that I mistook a green and white oval shaped sign for being Starbucks...I actually had forgotten what their trademark looked like...

Hope this was an interesting viewpoint for some and gave some giggles to others at what we found novel. In the meantime, we're working on getting over our culture shock, lol.

Stephanie

PS. Yes, we really did want to take that grocery cart home with us!!!




In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.--Ralph Waldo Emerson