Three Things You Do Differently When You Travel

When you travel, your lifestyle can change in slight or drastic ways, beyond what you experience. I'm talking about preference changes, internal changes, changes in you. There's two things that I do drastically different here:

1) Sleep. Or rather, not sleep. Here it's physically impossible for me to go to bed at a decent hour. When I finally lay my head on the pillow, it takes twice as long as normal to fall asleep, and I've never had insomnia before.

2) Eat. I swear being in a foreign country makes you hungrier. My hypothesis for why this occurs isn't fully developed, but I think it has something to do with the different choices in front of your face, constantly calling your name to experiment and enjoy while you can. The funny thing is, people tend to eat when they're bored. You'd expect that while living in a new place, you're more excited, occupied, and less apt to eat as an activity. But not me. And I'm not exercising more than I'm used to. Maybe I caught a fierce indigenous tapeworm. I bet the little Brazilian critter is naturally tan.

And I don't just eat more food, I eat different foods. For example, normally I'm not a chocolate person. Strangely, since I've settled in, I haven't been able to get enough. I buy bars of chocolate at the grocery store, and the hot chocolate from the coffee machine in the office is my best friend.

I also loosened my personal regulations on food. I have qualms with any meat that's been put into a grinder and spit back out. You never know what's in there. Without going into any detail, you can use your imagination. I dub this "sketchy meat." So no hot dogs, hamburgers, sausages, pot stickers, chicken nuggets, and definitely no Spam. As a foreigner in a new land, I've abandoned that rule, due to a combination of convenience, concern for politeness, desire to experiment and a feeling that this is like vacation, and on vacation the rules are out the window.

3) Watch TV. In San Francisco, I own a TV, but I don't even get the basic channels. I just watch TV for movies. Here, I veg out whenever I'm in the hotel. It's more interesting, because there's always either subtitles or dubbing to serve as education. I've become a TV freak. I have to say, On The Lot - the reality show about the directors - is captivating.

The quality of the shows I watch here is also questionable. Right now there's a Jason Priestley B-movie in the background. The other day I watched Seed of Chucky. The entire thing. And somehow I feel like it's more acceptable here to watch bad TV. I'm so far from home and I don't know what to watch. So basically being here is a giant excuse for watching anything I normally wouldn't. But I refuse to step down to the level of the local soap operas ("novelas"). There are some things I just won't do.