29 Jan Am I a California Girl Yet?

People scream during earthquakes. They shout helpful things like ‘Earthquake’, and ‘Oh God’ between intermittent breaks for general shrieking. I would not have been able to tell you this until moving to San Francisco, having lived on the small island that is the United Kingdom my entire life. In the UK, severe weather conditions are considered to be a couple of inches of snow. Although this may sound fairly unthreatening, these few centimetres of snow have the ability to utterly decimate any conceivable travel plans for days. Train lines are disrupted, planes are grounded, motorways are closed, the tube is delayed (you wouldn’t think so, what with it being underground and all, but you would be wrong). It was therefore quite the shock to have it confirmed that I was in a place that had very real and much more pertinent environmental difficulties than a few measly inches of snow once a year.

Thus, there was an earthquake the first week I was here. Then there were mud slides in Southern California the week after. This week there have been tsunami warnings issued to the entire west coast due to a large earthquake in Alaska. I do not want to propose that these horrific natural disasters are all directly correlated with my landing in California (because that would be pretty self-centered and small-minded), but I am also not completely ruling it out either. My first earthquake experience was not as eventful as one would imagine, in the sense that I was asleep for most of it and woke up the next morning under the impression that it was a dream. I vaguely remember waking up in the night to the violent shaking of my mattress, my roommate and other housemates shouting about an earthquake and imminent death, then turning over and falling back to sleep. Upon reflection I am not sure what I should be most concerned about in this story, my terrifying lack of fear for my own life, or the fact that my native housemates, all of whom have experienced earthquakes in their life here in SF, had no self-preservation procedure in the face of such disaster.

In terms of the general weather forecast, San Francisco can not seem to make up its mind. Pouring with torrential rain while remaining oppressively humid, on some days it maintains an atmosphere not unlike a gentrified tropic. These are the days when Karl is most prominent. For those of you who are not aware, Karl is the Fog. The San Francisco bay area is well-known for its fog phenomenon, apparently it is well-known enough that it now has a name. Karl. Apparently also well-known enough to have its own twitter account: https://twitter.com/karlthefog?lang=en, instagram as well. Check it out if you partake in any of the social medias. If it wasn’t confirmation enough that this city had named its own weather phenomenon after a misunderstood giant in Tim Burton’s ‘Big Fish’, the fact that said spectacle has more of an internet presence than I do has solidified that I have chosen the right place to live.

So, safe to say the weather is fairly unpredictable here. There are the aforementioned fog-filled days. There are the days when the cold bites and the wind is just as merciless, then there are the best days. The days you moved to California for. Days you have to squint through because you’re not yet a full-blooded Cali girl and don’t carry sunglasses on your person at all times just in case the sun does show itself. I am trying to adopt that easy Californian attitude of rolling with the fog, sunshine and earthquakes as they come, but am also coming to terms with the fact that I may always be that uptight British girl that loses any sense of decorum in the face of a couple of inches of snow.