#in fairness someone from say astoria might think about that differently or in very rural areas. but in the parts we're familiar with
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My best friend and I moved in together with his closest friend from his MA program, and while I had met her before (the friend; my bff is a man), we hadn't spent much time together because I've never lived away from the West Coast (and only two years out of the PNW) and she's never lived outside of North Carolina and only briefly visited the PNW once, when she went to Portland last year.
It's been a delight to show her around the PNW and realize we need to explain things that are just sort of omnipresent in our lives. The bff and I were casually griping with each other about having to run an errand to Trader Joe's at an inconvenient hour, and were telling her, "it's okay, you can stay in the car and avoid the people if you want" and she was like "NO I MUST SEE IT, I'VE ONLY HEARD OF THEM" and nearly ascended to another plane when we showed her around the store.
The bff and I grew up in the same town in NW Washington (him for his first 18 years, me from 9 to 19) and he lived in Bellingham and Seattle for years before he went to NC for grad school (I went to the SF Bay Area for mine, a very different experience). Both of them are hardcore coffee aficionados, but he struggled with the different Coffee Ways of the South, so for the true PNW experience they want to tour various indie coffeeshops next.
Also, she adores Kaidan in Mass Effect and we were like, oh, is your passport up to date? We could take a trip sometime and show you your boyfriend's beloved English Bay. It's very beautiful :)
her: O_O
me: Actually, it's worth going to Vancouver BC for its own sake as well, it's truly spectacular. We used to go all the time as kids.
bff: And Victoria!
her: O_O
#as much as i very openly love my homeland (read: the pnw. sometimes the whole west coast) at all times#it is truly special to experience it through someone who's never lived anywhere remotely near here. she's never seen vegas or seattle or la#we were super hungry after moving stuff yesterday and the bff was like 'i'm not sure i have a real restaurant in me...#let's just pick up some stuff from jack in the box'#her: 'what's a jack in the box?'#even the department store chains we're used to are different#also she's queer and was concerned about having queer friendly dating options out here and we're like '...oh sweetie'#and since she's from eastern nc we were also explaining that the pacific ocean up here is not like the atlantic#her: 'what are your hurricanes like?' us: '... we um. don't really have them'#then we were like... i mean rainier's lahars are going to melt seattle someday but these are infrequent events#and there will be seismic warnings. even mt st helens gave some warning!#i think the only disappointment for her so far was our building codes (she's very into proper infrastructure)#the roads are nice but our buildings are not designed for combating nature by her standards#it's interesting because we're so unused to the idea of nature as generally something to combat#in fairness someone from say astoria might think about that differently or in very rural areas. but in the parts we're familiar with#usually 'natural' dangers are 'poorly timed human fuckery' and things like rain generally come as friends#like yeah don't go antagonizing a bear or cougar or moose or whatnot but you'd really have to go out of your way#anghraine babbles#cascadia blogging#the adventures of space redacted#anghraine's gaming#us american blogging#i should probably have a bff tag#long post
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