The challenges of packaging

While grocery shopping I often get a kick out of the information on food and clothing items. I am used to there being a few different translations of ingredients and instructions on packages (mainly French and English since I am from Canada) but not as many as there are over here. It makes perfect since because many of the countries over here speak different languages and are close enough to over lap in local food distributors but i never imagined that  there would be 18+ languages on the back of each product. If I ever need to learn another language I am going to start with a grocery store...

 

As you already know as common knowledge or if you have read my blog (because it comes up a lot in my other entries) that it rains a lot in the United Kingdom. From what I understand this is one of the rainiest years in a while too. So knowing all of this I found it rather entertaining the other day when I walked through the aisles at Tesco Extra (the store for everything possible that you could ever want) and found there to be an entire row dedicated to sunscreen, bronzer and after sun. The bronzer makes since because it’s a common trend in the UK to have a slight orange glow induced by spray tan or tanning creams but the sunscreen and after sun was a total surprise to me.  I understand that yes you can get UV radiation in cloudy whether too, but even in the hottest brightest summers in Canada you don’t usually see entire rows devoted to sun protection products and that is in a country that actually sees the sun more than 12 hours a week. It really confused me until I talked to my roommate about it and he said it was because people in the UK really like to go on vacation to warm places. TADA! Of course! That made sense to me. There are very few weeks that I don’t think at least once about how much I would prefer to be in a warm bright dry place. Even coming back to Canada to find snow on the ground and a brisk wind seemed like heaven because there was sun. I needed sunglasses! Back to the main point, I now understand the point of the mass quantities of sunscreen but I guess the traveler in me is curious as to how many bottles of sunscreen are abandoned at airport security because their owners forgot to pack them in their checked bags or maybe I’m the only one that buys things like that at the destination because I am not confident enough in my packing organization.