Reading in the car
Because the roads are straight so you don’t get carsick. Imagine the efficiencies!

Broad radio programming
Granted, I don’t listen to the radio much, but as far as I can tell, the stations here go like this:
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 5
Assorted indistinguishable pop/rock stations
Classical station
Maybe some sports

Not a single country music, Christian, or Spanish language station in the bunch! I bet you, as an American, are probably listening to a Spanish Christian country station right now! 

Now let’s be honest: I wouldn’t normally listen to any of these stations anyway, but I like knowing that I could if I wanted to. And let’s not forget the deeply mourned loss of the John Tesh Radio Show.

Ovens that are, like, practical joke big
So I was at the grocery store a few days ago, looking to purchase a Pyrex baking dish for when Cenaida (et al.) come to visit us and we (just Cenaida) make lasagna from scratch, as is our New Year’s tradition when we’re not being lazy. Imagine my surprised dismay when I realized they did not carry the 9×13 dish to which I’m accustomed. Then I realized that this is because UK ovens don’t come that big (at least not the ones in the houses we’ve lived in). I can’t complain too boisterously, however, as I’m currently enjoying the heretofore unknown luxury of a double oven. Two entirely different temperatures at the same time, y’all.

Christmas parties that I understand
Here’s what I don’t get: office Christmas parties are a Big Deal here. People plan for them for months. Magazines are full of helpful hints as to a) what to wear to maintain that delicate balance between maximum skin exposure and plausible deniability in your sexual harassment lawsuit, b) how much boss-flirting is too much boss-flirting, and c) coping with the killer hangover you will surely have the next day because WORK PARTIES: WOOHOO! Maybe it’s the more liberal attitude toward drinking that gets everyone excited about boozing it up in front of their colleagues, but I still don’t get it—wouldn’t you rather be out somewhere with people you actually choose to see socially?

Christmas parties I understand: you show up, drink your two allotted drinks, eat some foods, converse politely, play some silly games, go home after 3 or 4 hours and get on with your life.

Christmas parties I don’t understand: you meet up for a drink beforehand, you eat, maybe open some silly gag gifts, drink your £15 of allotted drinks, and then it’s off to another location for more drinking! Because you are just getting started! The night is young, my friend, and you have yet to permanently damage your career! Not that anyone will remember.

One-stop shopping
It seems to me that we go shopping much more frequently here than we ever did in the US. It’s not that we’re buying more, it’s just that finding the things we need is so much more complicated. Either we don’t know the best store(s) to check (though we’ve been here long enough now that this isn’t really a problem anymore), or they only offer the bare minimum of options/quality, or they’re just plain out of stock. This would make more sense if they didn’t have huge US-style supermarkets, but they do—no excuses! Of course, I only have real trouble finding the truly exotic things like tissue paper, bottle brushes, or pastry blenders. I imagine one could walk into nearly any US supermarket and walk out 15 minutes later with all three items and they would have packed your groceries for you.

Our flight was instead delayed by 1.5 hours, during which time we were given approximately no information. Of any kind, really, until it was time to board and they apologized for unforeseen “maintenance issues.” At one point, a disgruntled British person approached the airline guy working the gate counter and regaled him with a delightful story about having been in the airport for the last 9.5 hours and something about “no communication” and “it’s just about customer service.”

And by “regaled,” I of course mean “bored to tears.” Every now and then, the airline guy would disinterestedly look up from his computer and say something like “I don’t have any more information than you do,” or “I can only tell you what they tell me,” and eventually the British person gave up and wandered himself off.

Then Stephan motioned me over to where he was standing, with a clear view of the aforementioned counter computer. “You know,” he said, “that guy has been googling frogs this whole time.”

Well, first there was the Chesterfield move, which took much longer than absolutely necessary, probably because there is less incentive to get everything shipshape squared away when your new house actually has enough room to function in without bothering to unpack.

Then there was this one trip we went on, to this place:

Hint: That roped-off area is a sea turtle nesting site, and we were delighted by the lack of tar balls.

No, not Blackpool: Florida Gulf Coast! We decided that it was about time to embrace our Britishness and vacation to Florida, like every single British person ever, even those who have never managed to make it so far as Scotland.

The real reason is that Stephan’s cousin had a Birmingham wedding we just couldn’t miss, after which all of the family who weren’t on their personal honeymoon(s) decamped to Seaside for a few days.

And we finished up with a layover at JFK that we spent in Manhattan, mostly trying to eat this wee little sandwich:

I figured since I was in New York, I should take the opportunity to have my annual Reuben. I did not expect the above Wad O’ Meat. Yes, it was delicious, despite the unnaturally colored Thousand Island, and no, I did not manage to eat all of it. More like half of the “sandwich” (I promise there’s bread under there) and maybe 12 fries.

I think I’m still digesting.

I’ve never really had a favorite season. This is probably because Portland only has two of them:

1. Mild and rainy [Labor Day until the day after the Rose Parade]
2. Sunny and humid [whatever is left]

Neither did I develop a seasonal preference after five years of living in Walla Walla, which ostensibly has four of them.

According to the Walla Walla Valley Academy school song, Walla Walla looks like this:

Where the Blue Mountains rise to meet the skies
Hills and valleys of green make a paradise
Whispering trees in the breeze waving to and fro
‘Neath their cooling shade mountain streamlets flow
It is here nature gives of her bounty rare
Waving fields, golden grains, flowers everywhere
In this land of apple blossom sweet
Stands a school none other can ever beat…

…but if you have ever actually been to Walla Walla, you know that the bounteous paradise described herein lasts for an approximately 12-hour period between winter (mostly frozen) and summer (mostly molten), usually during the middle of the night. Then it’s back to dust storms and softened tarmac.

So I have been pleasantly surprised to learn that April in England is glorious. Other places, take note: it only takes three things:

1. Daylight [longer days, start of British Summer Time helps]

2. Flowers [wildflowers, flowering trees and hedgerows, and gardens maintained by a people with an unparalleled  zealotry for gardening]

3. Birds [early morning birdsong, male birds trying out their cute little bird seduction tricks, everyone collecting nest supplies, and tiny little bitesize baby ducks on the canal]

O, to be in England
Now that April ‘s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossom’d pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray’s edge—
That ‘s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower
—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

* Robert Browning, “Home Thoughts, from Abroad”

Five excellent places I visited in the UK:
—Peak District
—Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow
—Edinburgh Military Tattoo
—Summits of most of the Three Peaks [Snowdon (highest point in Wales) and Scafell Pike (highest point in England)]
—Natural History Museum, London

Five excellent words and phrases brought to me by England:
—give it a miss [decline an invitation]
—kip [nap]
—lie in [as in, "having a bit of a..."; staying in bed past the accustomed time of arising]
—sort [take care of; "I've sorted the holiday plans"]
—twig [realize; comprehend]

Five excellent and highly underappreciated things about the US:
—Being able to send mail from the mailbox located at your personal home
—Free mail forwarding when you move
—A late November holiday to rein in the beginning of the Christmas season
—NFL commentators who are impeccably dressed (i.e., not wearing Smashing Pumpkins T-shirts from 1996) and actually contribute to one’s understanding of the game
—Summers that include sunshine and its associated warmth and vitamin D

Five unexpectedly excellent things about the UK:
—Speedy domestic mail service
—The canal system, in particular the bit of the Staffordshire-Worcestershire Canal that provides the quickest walking route from our house to the village
—Relative ease of accessibility to stroopwaffels
—David Attenborough, best nature program narrator of all time. I would listen to him narrate paint drying. Americans who got Sigourney Weaver instead on the Discovery Channel/BBC Planet Earth series: you were robbed!
—Starbucks on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral

Five excellent foods brought to me by England:
—Co-operative brand black currant and liquorice toffee candy
—Pick ‘n’ Mix at the movie theatre
—Bananas grilled with chocolate and marshmallow
—Toffee apples
—Tiger bread [technically a Dutch introduction]

Five best books:
—Adventures on the High Teas: In Search of Middle England by Stuart Maconie [Two years in a row for this guy!]

—Beautiful Boy by David Sheff [Heartbreaking. Drugs are bad, kids.]

—Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury [I love the bit where technology has advanced to the point of wall-sized TV screens, but hasn't progressed past CRTs and no one has computers. The trouble with writing about the future, I suppose.]

—Great Expectations by Charles Dickens [A little slow to getting around to reading this one, but worth it.]

—Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates [I can't remember whether I liked the movie better. It does have Leonardo DiCaprio in its favor.]

Five or so excellent commercials:
—Compare the Market series
—Ford S-Max
—Give it a Ponder series [not British, but still awesome]
—Know Your Limits
—Robinson’s All Natural

Five best movies:
—Black Book and The Counterfeiters [These go together because they're both excellent foreign-language films about World War II that I watched around the same time. Go ahead and throw in Defiance for good measure.]

—Chinatown [According to the Schwartz Theory of Movie Endings, this is the only movie I've ever seen that has an unequivocally bad ending.]

—The Hangover [The one movie I saw with Stephan this year. Hilarious, if you're into this sort of thing.]

—In Bruges ["It's in Belgium." (And it's rated R for a reason. Don't say I didn't warn you.)]

—Young Victoria [This is the only movie included herein that is approved for parental viewing. Seen in the Kensington High Street theater just down the road from where Queen Victoria was born and brought up. Featuring my introduction to theater pick 'n' mix, and a giant gummy shark my friend Sharon tried to choke on.]

Five most important things I learned:
—Not to drive with an empty or poorly fitted roof rack atop my car, offer hot drinks to accident victims, or rev my engine at elderly people in crosswalks

—How to letterpress

—The correct order in which to turn on and off the television and its assorted auxiliary components so as to save pushing one extra button each time and to prevent the further abuse of Stephan’s long-suffering patience

—The most efficient way to empty the water out of the washing machine when the pump stops working. Again.

—Keyboard shortcuts for the £, ¡, and — [Alt+0163, Alt+0161, and Alt+0151, respectively (and by the way, that is an inverted exclamation point, especially helpful for yelling things at Spanish-speaking people like  ¡CENAIDA!)]

This just in: England doesn’t actually celebrate Thanksgiving. A tragic oversight that only serves to introduce all sorts of problems, such as Christmas decorations appearing in stores in early October and people having their trees up already (the horror!). To help our British friends understand it all, I have prepared this short item to dispel some common Thanksgiving misconceptions.

Myth: Thanksgiving is just another day to celebrate America’s independence from Britain.

Fact: The first Thanksgiving (1621) was a harvest celebration after the Pilgrims survived their fist winter in North America; the fact that they left Britain for America is just a coincidence. Now it is a celebration of two of America’s most cherished deadly sins: gluttony and sloth.

Myth: But still, Thanksgiving celebrations could more accurately be called “Thank God We’re Not British” celebrations.

Fact: Vitriolic anti-British screed accounts for only 80 percent of traditional Thanksgiving fun, at best. The other 20 percent is eating pumpkin pie.

Myth: Thanksgiving is a day for American families to gather together and reflect on their blessings.

Fact: Thanksgiving is a day for American families to highlight and further solidify their gender roles. Persons of the female persuasion spend most of the day in the kitchen, and the men are just as dedicated to their traditional duty of watching football all day.

This is because American men are only permitted to cook outdoors and as late November is generally too cold to barbecue, their hands are tied—TIED!—unless, praise be, there is some turkey deep-frying to do.

Myth: So men’s Thanksgiving activities center primarily around watching television.

Fact: Men’s Thanksgiving activities center primarily around watching television while drinking.*

Myth: American football players are wimps; just look at all that padding.

Fact: American football (aka “real football”) players wear padding because they prefer to not actually die during course of play.

Myth: The Pilgrims ate turkey at the first Thanksgiving.

Fact: The Pilgrims were vegetarian. They ate vegetarian meatballs and they liked it.

Incidentally, this is exactly what we’re having at our Thank God We’re Not British celebration this weekend. And you’re invited! I can’t promise you available seating, but chances are good that I will accidentally sing my personal Ode to Pumpkin Pie out loud at some point, to the embarrassment of myself and those around me.

Pumpkin pie
Pumpkin pie
Pumpkin pumpkin pumpkin pie
(repeat)

* Of course, I don’t actually know this firsthand: even if I had ever been to a Thanksgiving where alcohol was served, OBVIOUSLY my Thanksgivings are spent in the kitchen.

1. Super nice people we know have not yet winterized their boats. And then let us ride in them.

2. A Starbucks to sell me cinnamon dolce lattes on every corner.

3. Ability to wash all laundry for the week in one giant load of clothes and then dry, fold, and put away with no ironing whatsoever. In the space of three hours. Without having to go outside.

4. So gorgeous of weather the entire time we were there. Really, Pacific Northwest, job well done. Definitely your most pleasant month.

5. Annual and prolific spider invasion back home is out of sight, out of mind.

Top 5 reasons being back in the UK after the aforementioned month in the US is AWESOME:

1. New neighborhood cats who invite themselves in when you are putting out the aforementioned spiders.

2. Control of one’s own destiny, specifically in regards to the ambient temperature of the home in which one is staying, Adriaan.

3. Canal walks on which one sees a Eurasian kingfisher for the first time.

4. New DVR allowing us to watch American football sometimes when we want to.

5. Stroopwafels from the Amsterdam airport.

Welcome home, me.

Lots of fun so far, including this trip down the gorge, in which my sensitive eyeballs were bombarded by the rays of the sun, which, although large, is so far away that it appears small.

This is what it looked like for normal people:

And this is what it looked like for me:

Why, you ask? Because I was wearing these:

They were in my mom’s car, and no one knows whose they are.

They are mine now.

Bolthouse Farms vanilla chai smoothie (So good tasting. So good for me.)

Pizza Schmizza rustic pie (Portland pizza chain pizza featuring potatoes, broccoli, tomatoes, and feta SO GOOD.)

Cinnamon Toast Crunch (How often did I eat this at home? Just about never. My tastebuds don’t care.)

root beer float (Also not that often, also not cared about by my tastebuds.)

grape juice (Doesn’t exist here! Except for some white grape flavors all mixed up with other stuff. Not quite the same. AND THEN they try to feed me black currant flavor instead.)

kumquats (I have no idea of these exist here, but I haven’t seen any.)

watermelon (All we’ve found are the round, seedless type, which don’t count.)

lemonade + iced tea (Luckily, these are quite easy to make myself. Just not all that fun. And not all that helpful when we’re out somewhere.)

shaved ice (Lime + grape flavor, please!)

But, as always, I would give all these up for a Rainier cherry or two.