The Stars

What I was going to post on the 13th before my time on the Internet terminal was up was about the stars. On Friday night when Kerrie and I went to the beach I was taken by how strange it was to see a whole bunch of stars in unfamiliar patterns. It’s obvious in retrospect, but seeing the stars of the Southern Hemisphere was really odd. I have been interested in astronomy my whole life, and now here I was looking at a totally different set of stars. Just like driving on the left side of the road instead of the right, something that has become so familiar to me is all of a sudden brand new while still being the same.

Later that night after Kerrie had gone to sleep, I was typing up some notes for those posts outside on the laptop so I could post them the next day. I looked up and saw another strange sight: the constellation Orion, but he was in the wrong place in the sky and he was upside down. It was the first time it struck me so clearly that we really were on the other side of the globe, and my head is pointing almost the opposite direction it points at home, looking into space with a whole different perspective.