On the day we moved in, the Bishop of our congregation told us, “There’s a lot of unique things about living in Arizona, but I would never want to ruin the surprise for you!” So he left us to muse and to wonder what some of those unique “surprises” might be. And in the last few months we’ve compiled quite a list, both negative and positive. I now present for your reading enjoyment, the top ten.
10. Tile
Its everywhere. We actually first noticed this when we started looking for houses. Some places we looked at had tile in the entire house! Luckily, we just have tile throughout our main floor (kitchen, dining, living rooms) and we have carpet upstairs. It sure feels nice and cool on hot feet, but soft slippers are becoming a must. Oh and our new shag rug. Spending too much time on hard tile makes for some sore feet!
9. Drivers Licenses
Expires in the year 2054. No joke. Apparently Arizona doesn’t require a renewal until you’re 65. Good thing I was having a good hair day that day, because I’m stuck with my picture till then. Which I’m totally okay with (raise your hand if you detest waiting for your lotto ticket to be called at the DMV…) The only thing that boggles my mind is, why then did we STILL wait for over 2 hours to get our licenses…surrounded by a room full of people who I can assure you were neither 16 nor 65? How many people could possibly move there in one weekend anyway?
8. Latino Culture
Also everywhere. And we’re loving it. Sometimes I look around and wonder if we moved to Mexico. Joe and I LOVE Mexican food and have felt pretty deprived of it the past few years, so we’re really enjoying that. Fresh tortillas. Horchata. Jarritos. Everything is in both Spanish and English. Many billboards are only in Spanish. We even saw a “Supermercado de Walmart” the other day. At work our caseloads are about 75% Hispanic, so we’re feverishly working to improve our Spanish. I never thought I would be doing speech therapy IN Spanish but although many days I flounder, many days God makes me equal to the task. I guess this is as close as we’ll get to immersion in the United States.
7. Water
Two things. First, no matter how long you wait with the faucet cranked to “C” and your hand under the running water, it never actually gets cold. Crazy. Maybe that will change once the weather cools down a bit, but I’ve been told its normal. So I’ll stop running up our water bill waiting for it to happen (:
Second, it tastes gross. I’ve never been one to mind drinking out of the tap, but now I’m a loyal Brita filter kind of girl. It solves problem number one AND problem number two.
6. “Zeroscape”
That’s what they call it when you throw a bunch of rocks down and call it a yard. Due to the extreme temperatures, many types of grass don’t do so well here. It exists, but not as pervasively as I’m used to. As in, a lot of the kids I work with don’t really know what a lawn mower is. Our front yard is rocks and a few bushes. And our back yard is currently dirt and weeds. But Joe is bound and determined to plant some grass, so we’ll see how (if?) that works.
5. Exotic Plants
What Arizona DOES have is palm trees. Lots and lots of palm trees. And cacti. Until moving here, when I thought of cactus I pretty much thought of this:
But Arizona has a TON of varieties of cacti, and several different kinds of palm trees too. They even have palm tree farms, where they grow them in preparation to be sold.
a palm tree farm not too far from us
The Mesa temple has a wide variety of citrus trees on its grounds. Limes, grapefuit, lemons. So fun. We’re still not exactly sure who gets to pick and eat all of them (fresh lemonade for temple workers, perhaps?)
4. Produce
That brings me to the next wonderful surprise. Delicious, amazing, CHEAP produce. I’m from the apple state, so you’d think I’d be familiar with good/cheap apples. But I kid you not, we bought honeycrisp apples a few days ago for 88 cents/pound. I saw Gala apples on sale for 3lbs for 99 cents. And grapes for 77 cents/pound. We’ve been making lots of limeade because I bought 14 limes for under $2. But the mangos. Ahhh the mangos. There are some nice Mexican fellas that set up a truck and sell mangos a few minutes away from us. And they are the biggest, juiciest, most heaven-sent thing you will ever eat. Yes, I could get used to the produce around here.
3. Heat
The surprise here is that it really isn’t so bad. At least as long as you don’t dawdle in between your car and wherever you’re going. Air conditioning is a beautiful thing. We only really felt the full Arizona heat for a month before it started to cool off (all the way down to 95 now folks!) But honestly 98, 120… once it gets above 95 it all sorta seems the same. Hot. Another interesting thing is that many of the tree trunks here are painted white so that the bark doesn’t get sun burnt. I’m still not exactly sure what a sunburnt tree would look like, but I’m no master gardener so I’ll go with it.
2. Critters
We’ve been lucky in the critter department…only dealing with some pesky crickets and a few black widow sightings in the back yard. We do have a herd of pigeons that like to sunbathe on our roof and poop on our driveway. I’m pretty sure its illegal to shoot them, but I’ll admit in a moment of wrath it did cross my mind. However one day we did something stupid and googled “what bugs/animals are native to Arizona”. Ignorance really is bliss. Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea. All kinds of freaky looking lizards and poisonous snakes. And of course the cockroaches, scorpions and gigantic wolf spiders. Like I said though, so far we’ve mostly only had crickets. We’re spraying everything like crazy and crossing our fingers it stays that way.
1. Monsoon Season
August and September are Phoenix’s monsoon season…which makes for the best thunderstorms ever. As long as you’re inside, don’t have to go anywhere, and don’t have any flooding. Luckily, we fit all three of those categories for most of the storms. It really is incredible how hard and how fast and how much it rains here. I just love to sit inside and listen to it! Of course there has been a few storms that caused quite a bit of flooding in the valley, and one that kept us home from work for the day. But overall the many “washes” throughout the city do a good job of managing the water. They become lakes in a matter of minutes and then slowly drain, keeping the roads free and clear.
this wash quickly became a lake after a recent thunderstorm
Phew. That was a long one. Good work if you made it all the way to the end. Until next time!
love, the hills
We reached a landmark. After a total of 20 years in school, Joe has officially graduated with his doctorate degree in physical therapy (DPT)! We joke that we’ll call him Dr. Joe now. But really I might. Because its a big deal, and we couldn’t be happier.
And being the only doctorate program at Eastern, Joe’s class got to be the very first to walk in, the first to have their names read. Which is handy when there’s a few thousand graduates.
After a nerve-wracking couple of days, he was given his offer. It took until the very last possible second, but we both received our answer. Phoenix is where we’re meant to go right now. Scary? YES. Far away? YES. Sweltering hot? YES! But somehow this is the place for us at this time of our life. We both feel so good about it.
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