Twelve hours of flying, eight hours of layovers, forty four hours of driving, and a six hour time difference separated me from the others in my new home. When I came a month in advance to set up an apartment, get a job, and orient myself in a rural town, they merely drove a couple of hours from their hometowns, instead of flying across an ocean. This made me an outlier in any situation, but I enjoyed my inability to assimilate into the crowd. There were too many things to be excited about, to worry about normal. A school with only a thousand or so students, a town with so few people, the thought of regulars who helped out the employes at my job, all of it was new and strange. Heck, I spent a week marveling at the tiny red fire trucks, because they were cute just like the toys. They didn't need to be as long as a limo to reach up the hotels and condos, nor were they a sunny yellow. I found joy in discovering daily normalities for others. But, since day one the oddest thing was the weather. It had never occurred to me before that I could tell what the weather would be like, simply from the wind on my face in the morning until I had lost the ability. Instead of constant sunny days, north winds, and the occasional downpour the weather became something entirely different. I finally understood why there was a weather app on my phone and a weather channel on the TV; it was completely unpredictable. Every other day the sun and clouds would fight for superiority. One day humid and hot, the next a thunderstorm. The battle got worse when the sun gave up, defeated by the cold air, but by then I had a new distraction. When the leaves began to changed, I picked up the first that fell, goggling at its striking colors. I realized the fall leaves were nature's redemption for the lack of vibrant sunsets. The shades of pink, red, yellow, orange, and purple were identical. For the months of fall, whenever the cold hit I would merely look to the sky in order to set a smile on my face. Bright blue, peeking through scattered leaves from half barren trees, it was a beautiful sight. The sidewalk painted in red never failed to make me grin; I couldn't help but smile when I acknowledged the abnormality of my situation. Leaves changing from green to red--ha--only ever on TV, but now I saw it before my eyes. It was something people from my home would never get to see, because I knew many of them would never leave the rock to discover the grand world. Occasionally my mind would get confused, it could not understand how the sun lacked warmth, how the air was so frigid. When I walked into the light I expected to be relieved by the immediate heat; I was always disappointed. The sun was not warm, there was no temperature difference between shade and light. This disappointment continued through my first two snow falls. Each time I was stuck, working, wasting the hours away when I could be enjoying the frozen drops cooling the earth. By the time I was able to walk outside there would be rain melting the fresh shine away. But eventually I got a day off, and to my joy it was the first “real” snow day. A day when the snow was fluffy and permanent. First thing in the morning, ignoring breakfast and logic, I left my cozy apartment for an adventure, bundled up in three layers with waterproof boots, and a camera in my hands. Taking dozens of pictures at every stop I explored my first white world. The trees were caked in icing, roads and rocks smoothed by a thick layer of snow. With my first step my feet sank, three maybe four inches down. I walked down my usually path to class, with a spark in my step. Each was recorded by the snow, drawing a map of my journey. A tree from a fantasy world, a rock shaped like a perfect sphere, a metallic bell statue, a half frozen river, a troll bridge: a few of the winter wonders I captured as I explored my transformed world. Overnight a starch blanket had wrapped around the town. That day I learned a number of things: a snow bank is when the snow is piled up on the side of the road, they are called snow plows not bulldozers, always point your windshield wipers to the sky, buy something to scrape the ice and brush the snow. Oddities which I enjoyed being oblivious of. I loved the snow. Some would say my opinion would change. Give it a year or two and all of my joy would disappear, but I knew them to be wrong. The only reason I found joy in the normal things was because I could understand how for someone somewhere what I saw was the strangest thing in the world. I do not grin because I don't know; I grin because there are so many differences between culture even in the same country. I grin because humanity is vast but ignorant and I am always finding something new. I will not forget the abnormality of snow in the winter because half of the world does not have it. I use to be apart of that half. Now I am not.