Cinnamon's Journal

by Mocha Star

Day 2

Day 2 January 11 2016 Moonday

We found the weather device by the front window and their degrees celsius was close enough to our temperature so we decided to use the human temperatures and it was still far below freezing when Amber and I woke up. I wanted to go for a morning trot, but it wasn’t worth freezing if I wore too little or overheating if I wore too much. At this temperature the best thing is to stay inside, so we started breakfast and turned on the TV to a music channel that played a nice concert while we cooked.

Amber still thinks she’s a fantastic cook like I am, but she’s not and I have to remind her what not to add to food or it won’t taste very good at all. She’s a very smart pony, but mostly when it comes to books and science, not food. But I didn’t say that!

We woke the children up from their sleep and Blueberry had fallen asleep on the floor by the bed because he didn’t want to wake the foals and that was nice of him, but kind of foolish because if we hadn’t turned on the furnace he would have been very cold. Thanks to our TV watching we learned that not all Ford’s are named Ford. They all seem to have their own name so we all felt foolish because we thought it was a translation for wagon but it was the type of wagon, an esyouvee, Blueberry told us.

They work by using controlled explosions to move around. It sounds very dangerous to me, but he said that they rarely exploded in real life and were safer and stronger than any pony wagon would ever be… at least as far as we know. The Princesses had pretty powerful magic so maybe they could enchant a wagon to be strong and safe. I don’t know why they would, but whatever.

The foals did more schoolwork while Blueberry watched TV and Amber and I spent time talking with the computer and learning what we could about local customs with foals and introductions and we were happy we wouldn’t have to parade them around in saddles and bridles. Human shows are just that, shows.

We made sure to let the foals know to not trust everything that happened on the TV and they understood pretty quickly that a show is like a play and shouldn’t be taken too seriously and to avoid certain channels until we figured out what shows were about human violence. We don’t want them to think violence is okay here, even if it is.

We played cards and wasted time until it was almost lunch and weren’t too happy to have done nothing because of the cold and us not knowing where anything was so we skipped lunch and drank lots of water and bundled up warmly, then went for a family trot through the downtown areas. The streets had no humans but cars that made a lot of smoke when they drove that smelled pretty bad. We walked to a car gas station and went in to warm up and were yelled at at first because they didn’t know we were smart and wouldn’t pee on their floors.

They were nice to us after we told them our names and said we were going to buy something and then we picked some soda called Monster and chips and paid for them with our credit card then left the station and were warm enough to enjoy our snacks. Well, enjoy is a strong word. The chips were good but the Monster was bad.

It lived up to its name but we didn’t want to throw it away and waste it so we tried to drink it but only Blueberry liked it and finished the last half of it.

We continued in the direction that most of the cars went and found a lively area that was the downtown. There was snow falling now so we looked for a nice place to warm up and socialize with the locals and found a small restaurant that served sandwiches named Subway. There were a few people there so we each went to a different table and started talking with them and they were all very nice and talked with us and when a new person came in they saw us and turned around and left right away.

That didn’t bother us because we were making new friends and soon we had all their fohn numbers and they had ours and we were excited to meet some of them later in the week at a place called The ‘Kay because it was a place to hang out, but foals weren’t allowed so we needed to find a foalsitter for our littlest ones and Blueberry was old enough to come along.

Blueberry was quite the chatterbox compared to normal and was talking with several tables going between them all and garbling his words when he tried to talk too fast and the translator couldn’t keep up, so we told him to slow down but he started talking really fast and we were kind of worried so we decided food would help him.

We ordered a sandwich each with the little ones splitting one and we ate them at a booth that was a little too small for us all so I just stood on my hind legs and ate at the end of the table until a person gave me their chair to sit on and they left and ruffled my mane. I hadn’t had my mane ruffled by hands before and it kind of felt nice.

The Subway was full of people having lunch and getting out of the cold so as we left we thanked the cooks and told them how good the food was and we smiled for a few photographs as we left.

It was snowing lightly still, and it was really cold but we had full bellies and each other so it wasn’t that bad. We stayed close together though because there were some gusts of wind that almost took our hooves from under us as we explored the streets until we came to a coffee shop called the Urban Stampede and we liked the name so we went in and were told to leave because they weren’t going to serve animals and as we were leaving another person stopped us and apologized for the clerk's attitude and told us about the history of the coffee shop and he was a manager there and was going to give us a discount on our coffee.

We thanked him but said we’d already had coffee in the morning and too much coffee was bad for a pony and probably a person, too. But we ordered tea and he gave us a nice place to sit so while we waited we took our coats off and our scarves and relaxed as soothing human music played but didn’t talk because there wasn’t much to say. We got our cups of tea and they had bags on strings full of tea leaves… just like back home. The similarities were glaring sometimes.

Amber kept her hat on because she didn’t want to make a fuss and drank like an earth pony, with her hooves, because she said it was nice to do things the earth pony way sometimes. Gosh I love her.

We drank our tea while the foals drank some of our tea but had their own hot chocolates, on the house, and we talked with a couple of the other people there about life in Grand Forks and one of them, a woman named Debbie, said there wasn’t much to do during winter unless you had a love of the snow.

I didn’t, but the children liked it enough and Amber had grown up helping with Winter Wrap Up in Ponyville so she didn’t mind the snow, but the cold was what we all didn’t like, especially since we didn’t have our winter coats.

We explained what we meant by not having winter coats and the clerk that was rude to us before scoffed and said if we shed he’d have to clean it and would put it in our next drinks. He was scolded in the back room and quit on the spot after that. I would have felt bad for someone losing their job, but he was a verlion that needed to get a job more suiting.

There was a rush starting and the other clerks were very busy making coffee and other drinks so we finished our drinks and bundled up again and as we were leaving several teenage humans stopped us and started asking us all about Equestria and we decided to explain what we could and we had lost our seats to a group of other humans so we apologized and said there wasn’t space to talk and they asked us if we had a Facebook.

They laughed when Amber asked why we’d put our faces in a book and then used their fohns to show us that it was like the Stratonet chat and we could hold conversations there and several of them asked if we needed one set up and that they’d love to help us but there were too many to take back home and we didn’t want to be a bother to our neighbors or invite a troublemaker into our house because there’s always one, so we said we’d think about it and we got some of their fohn numbers and bumped hooves to hands, which wasn’t as weird as I thought it would be, and left.

We didn’t talk the rest of the way back home but once we got inside we all talked over each other while we undressed and got to the bathroom to use the toilets and we were able to use them by ourselves now because we’d been practicing but they weren’t stallion friendly. These were obviously designed by mares, human ones. Women.

We called a couple of the people and they were surprised to hear from us so soon and we had to send the children to watch TV while we talked with our humans over our fohns before we invited them over. Only Amber’s friend had said yes and it was a nice woman and she said she’d bring her husband and children and we’d have a night of it.

We were very happy to hear that and made sure to clean the areas they’d see very well and made sure to wash our hooves from the walk we’d taken before we started with the party. We didn’t have any of the usual party supplies and the computer said the shop for party supplies was on the other side of town which was an hour gallop, one way!

We chose to do a more refined party and set the children in their room with their toys and Blueberry was going to be using the computer while Amber and I entertained our guests. We prepared snacks of a variety of vegetables and a can of mixed fruit that smelled too sugary but if the humans made it, they must like it that way…

We didn’t have any meat, though, so we just decided we’d apologize to them and hope we weren’t too rude for not having meat for them. The sandwiches we had were vegetables and cheese, of course, but meat was an option, too, and we hadn’t taken it. Pony’s can eat meat in a lot of ways, but too much and we’ll get sick and that’s not fun or good.

When they came over the woman, Sarah, was happy to see us and she introduced us to her husband, Stephan. They had a child that was about Blueberry’s age and was a girl named Nirah, while the next youngest was a boy named Daniel and was young enough to have fun with our foals so we split up and Amber led the children to their respective groups and I sat and snacked on some carrots while Sarah and Stephen asked me what we thought of earth so far.

I said I hadn’t seen enough to make a fair guess, but it was cold here and that made them laugh because it was nice, they said. Amber returned and bumped me so I’d stop looking so confused. Humans don’t have fur and it’s cold, really cold, so how is it nice? They said you get used to it and that was true, we just hadn’t adapted yet.

Amber used her magic to pick up some celery and Sarah was amazed and Stephan was too. They asked a lot of questions about basic magic and Amber answered the best she could, which was impressively boring to me, before she started having fun and the vegetables on the tray started dancing with each other in the air between us.

Amber reset the vegetables and we all started talking about the weather, because we didn't understand why humans wanted it so cold that the ground froze a leg deep, at least.

They explained that humans didn't have control of the weather and it was because the planet was getting cooler and hotter in the wrong places and we were kind of lucky because a decade ago it was warmer but the snow was so deep we wouldn't have been able to move around unless we were in the roads and twenty years ago the whole area was flooded because the snow was so much that it was almost as deep as houses.

We explained how Winter Wrap Up worked in Equestria and they were hopeful that maybe we could fix earth before something bad happened, but it isn't our responsibility to fix a whole planet that somepony else messed up, is it? Maybe when we're all friends and living in harmony we can work out smaller details. And that seems to be more of a pegasi problem than am earth pony problem.

Sorry Amber, but unicorns could have to help more than we do, but we'll see and hope that peace will work and we can have open trade. I know many ponies that would love to farm or manage a new world.

We checked on the young periodically and Blueberry was setting up a Facebook with Not an and he said he'd explain it to us later.

The younger ones were playing wagons and bandits in their room with Daniel as a wagon driver keeping ahead of the bandits. After we had a dinner that we knew our guests didn't enjoy that much we wished them fair travels under a sky full of light and then cleaned up after ourselves and made sure the children cleaned up their room and made their beds before they brushed and got ready for bed.

Lilli and Timber were asleep as fast as we liked them to be; right after we tucked then in. Blueberry showed us what Facebook was and how to use it and we decided one was enough for all of us and we'd just talk to anyone and tell them who was talking to the computer to talk to them, unless they wanted to fohn us.

Humans seemed to like to send telegrams over their fohns more than talk over them. Blueberry showed us that our fohns have a lot of stuff in them like calculators and alarms and even how to take our own photographs.

All we have to do is look at something and say cheese in human and it will take a photograph without any paper or ink at all! We're going to spend time on Facebook finding our human friends and some time to learn more about our fohns now. Today was very eventful, so tomorrow will be better!

Comments

[HB_DS2013]

I think Cinnamon and his family will have a better time with the European bathrooms where the toilet is just a big hole in the middle of a very large tile. I might be wrong about what it looks like, though.

[Mocha Star]

7830097
In my world they use squat toilets like in Asia...
Then they have to get used OUR toilets... lol not made for stallions!

[HB_DS2013]

7830148 The urinals? Where is Grand Forks anyway?

[Mocha Star]

7830395
America's tundra: North Dakota