Our plane left Grand Rapids at 6:00 am and landed in Chicago at 5:54. From the beginning of our journey, we were already time travelers.
The following day, when we flew from Honolulu to Guam, we crossed the international date line, propelling us exactly one day into the future. For all intents and purposes, from our perspective, July 31 never happened.
Considering our proximity to the easternmost longitude of the planet, we are the pioneers of every tomorrow. What's the future like, you ask?
Mostly sunny, with a ninety percent chance of rain.
Actually, in many ways, it feels like we're living in some parallel version of the not-too-distant past, where family names stand in place of physical addresses, and women walk barefoot along the side of the road with a naked baby in one hand and a rusted machete in the other.
Meanwhile, gas costs a constant $5.10 a gallon and the internet comes to us by means of a thousand miles of underwater fiber optics cable. Micronesia is an anachronistic anomaly, trying to find its place in the future while maintaining its connections to the past. The products that populate the shelves of local stores are reflective of fifteen more years of added inflation, despite that most items are already well past their expiration dates.
A box of cereal costs about eight bucks. A package of ten disposable razor blades costs seventeen fifty. A can of parmesan cheese goes for about fourteen dollars. Conversely, products that originate here are ridiculously cheap, though limited in variety. Fresh tuna, pineapple and coconuts are a tiny fraction of what they cost in the U.S., while Budweiser, the self-proclaimed king of beers, is at a price reserved for royalty.
As poor as many of the people are who live here, frankly, I don't know how they can afford it. Globalization, in this case, seems like less of a blessing than it is a curse. But hey, at least there's no McDonald's here.
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