Questions and Answers...

Happy October to you all! Pumpkins and Samhain and soon it will be Stephen's birthday, and I am excited to be able to try out my carrot cake recipe for him. Everything is just slightly different cooking here. Spices act and taste just a bit different, things need a titch more or less cooking. It's a lot to adjust to. I have high expectations that my carrot cake will come out as delicious as I hope it to.

I love it when people interact with my blog. I love it when people ask me questions and give me something to look at specifically for them, and in the hopes of getting more questions, I'll share the ones I just received. Dan the Man sent me an email asking me all sorts of 'curiosity' questions. So instead of posting a reply just to him, I though that, since other people might be curious about the same thing, I'd answer them here.

Here's what Dan said... "So, overall, how does it feel being in the UK? Have you felt any different (besides cold)? Have you met any other "yanks" in Canterbury? The university experience any different from NM? On the school front, how does Ashley like school? How are her classes different than here in the States? Number of periods? Length? Class size. etc. Thanks ;)"

How does it feel being in the UK? Have you felt any different (besides cold)?

You know when you are 12, just turning 13 tomorrow... and you think for sure you will feel different because you will be a TEENAGER... and tomorrow comes and you really don't feel any different at all? That is how this is. It is so awe-inspiring, so overwhelmingly mind blowing, that I can't stay in the mindset of how amazing it is. I forget to be appreciative in the trudge of daily existance. I have to remind myself to look up and conciously remember that these buildings are older than the entire COUNTRY I was living in. I have to remind myself to notice.

And then, there are times when England reaches out and grabs me by the throat and forces me to remember. Like when staring at the tree in Westgate Gardens that has a trunk larger than the diameter of a car. Or when listening to the piper standing on a street corner of the High Street playing in rags, with a dog at his feet and a small pool of coins on a cloth in front of him. Or standing by the eternal river flowing past the ancient gate and into the city center. Times like that it is impossible not to wonder if I am really here and now, in this time, or if I have somehow managed to slip back into the past and stand in the completely different body of some wandering peasant. And if so, have they slipped forward to take my place for a moment? Are they as awestruck as me?

Sometimes, I'm held motionless by it. And sometimes, I forget. Both are disconcerting.

Have you met any other "yanks" in Canterbury?

As far as other Americans, I have met 1 who has been at the University I attend and works in the International Office. She is leaving come spring to go back to the States. She is from Oklahoma. The next closest is a collegue of Stephen's, who is from Canada. He sounds fairly North American, and has been living in Ireland for 7 years. Otherwise, everyone around me is British. Their voices have become normal enough that an accent like mine stands out in a crowd more than the English accent does. On the news this morning, they were interviewing an American, and she sounded strange to me, almost harsh. I wondered if that is really how I sound.

However, Stephen's mum works in the same corridor with 4 Texans. Just the other day she asked me, in all seriousness, if I carried duct tape and WD-40 (though she called it CD-23 or something like that, and it took us forever to figure out what she meant) in my purse, because one of the Texans she works with said that ALL real Texan women carry Duct tape and WD-40 with them everywhere they go. I had to sheepishly explain that I must not be a real Texan - and that I lived on the border anyway... we don't carry duct tape and WD-40, we carry black eyeliner and Our Lady of Guadalupe medallions.


The university experience any different from NM?

The first week I was completely overwhelmed. They absolutely piled on the workload, and said things like, "Now, you need to be doing a lot of reading on your own, which is why we are not giving you a lot to do." I think I figured out why I was overwhelmed.

Here, there are 3 terms in a year. You stay in the classes you take for the entire year. And they give you a list of all the work you have to do for the entire year at the start of the classes. So all this work is spread over the entire year. I'm not used to that. It seems like too much, and I'm going to have to really work to figure out how to manage my time effectively.

I still haven't figured out the book situation. I'm not sure what I need to buy or even if I need to buy. And in general, the University seems disorganized. But it is nothing that I can exactly put my finger on.

On the school front, how does Ashley like school? How are her classes different than here in the States? Number of periods? Length? Class size. etc.

I think it best if I let Ashley answer this question for you, as she is the one actually experiencing her schooling, and can compare it much more effectively than I can. I'll have her post on this tonight.

Now for a complete change of subjects... Stephen and I had an interesting discussion last night on my post about grocery stores and the plethora of ready meals. He said it sounded 'cheeky'. After a discussion of exactly what 'cheeky' means (which I'm still not sure I understand... but it is something like sometimes bratty and sometimes slightly rude, but not always...) he stated, and rightly so, that the US is /known/ for being a country that is so focused on fast foods. So I feel that I should clarify. I haven't been to a whole lot of grocery stores here, so I can't really generalize that ALL stores have so much in the way of ready meals. And I went to stores in the US that were geared towards my kind of cooking (whole raw foods). So it's not entirely fair to say that the UK has more ready-meals in a general sense. Its like comparing apples and oranges.

I stick by my statement that I have seen more ready meals (in % of the store focusing on them) in the stores that I have been to here than I did in the stores I frequented in the States. I am open to changing my mind as I see more.