Arizona makes me home sick

I have lived in Pennsylvania for going on 9 months now, and I have yet to really feel home sick at any point. Sure, I miss the faces and places and activities, but I have not had any saddening or crippling longings. This is also confounded by a little entity called Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.), also known as the "winter blues."I, along with many of my cohorts, probably have this on some level. You can click on the above link to learn more, but basically it is feeling down and tired and grumpy throughout the winter, related to significant lack of sunlight (especially in someone who is used to regular sun). Despite this, all in all, I have done pretty well, until recently.

I went to Arizona (Tempe/Phoenix) last week for an Emergency Medicine conference. It wasn't until I was sitting on the tarmac at PHX, feeling the warm glow of the sun through the thick airplane window that I began to realize what I had been missing. It was 90 degrees in March, sunny... and made me miss home.

Here are the things I came across (and fiended for) in Arizona that made me homesick: the sun... the girls in tank tops and bikinis... lying by the pool... beer and liquor in the grocery and convenience stores... Oregon and Alaskan beer on the shelf in said stores... Mexican restaurants everywhere... and good Mexican food... Hispanics that are actually Mexican... no dopey New Jersey accents (jerk-ohrfs)... hiking available out one's front door... barbecues daily... wearing shorts and flip flops constantly... sleeping without a down comforter... people that rock climb... Carl's Juniors instead of Hardees... Dreyer's ice cream not Eddy's... Best Foods mayo, not Hellman's... Safeways... coffee that is not Starbucks... a relatively normal time zone... radio station identifiers that begin with the letter K... a decent country music station... farmland that smells like buttered grits...

So even though it wasn't quite like being back home, it was a welcome and much-needed reprieve from the East. I tried to fill up on all of these things so that I may make it through the rest of the winter here with some sanity leftover. Oh, and the constant sun (and nice tan I got) more or less temporarily cured me of my S.A.D.