Anticipation and Adulation

The anticipation of getting to know these people around me is building to a high crescendo. I thoroughly want to make these people my friends, speak their language and delight them. Maybe that's just the training I've received so far talking because I am head over heels for this hotel. I can barely contain my profusion of praise right now. I think my mom is worried about how fickle my heart is because not even four days ago I was bawling at the airport and saying how miserable I was. Now I can't stop the affluence of my admiration toward this company and these people. I would stop and listen to your warnings of drinking the cool-aid, but the sound of a stone pedestal rising from the earth would drown it out.

Have I mentioned that I'm a minority for the first time in my life? Saying that we are stared at a lot is a grand understatement. Maintaining eye contact with distant gawkers is becoming sort of a sport now, and less of an awkward interaction. We make workers stop working just to watch us walk by, bus riders giggle and wave, and the older generation stare in bewilderment and what seems to be mild disapproval. But that could just be my paranoid view on strangers glaring at me.
Maybe its just my upbringing, but I feel as though I am an inconvenience to the people I am around,  no matter their declarations otherwise. I have have noticed however, that no matter how put out they are, this new culture hardly shows a glimmer of annoyance or impatience. I have much to learn.

Wearing a suit somehow changes my perspective on everything. Interacting changes because I feel more grown up, more respectable, working because I feel productive and important, eating because I might get food on it. But when I shimmy into those dreaded panty hose, zip up that pencil skirt and put on a suit with 90's padded shoulders my being shifts into a new mode. What is this phenomenon? Can polyester and nylon actually change the chemical makeup of our brains, or is the slouching capability so limited that sitting up straighter is second nature?

Also, we made it about four blocks away from our apartment, almost bought some lipstick and came back to Shangri-La, or as I see it through rose colored glasses; Home.