Well, I guess I have turned into a completely lazy British person. Lounging in the park this afternoon, listening to the Hare Krshnas clang their finger cymbals and chant. I may also be becoming lethargic due to the fact that my caffeine consumption has been reduced by at least 50 percent.
As I type, I am helping the Pastor translate something from Hebrew. Apparently, in Judges 9, Abimelech killed 70 men with one stone. That was some rock! Must've been kinda like my engagement ring.
I can't remember what I've blogged about already (not much) or what I've emailed to people, so don't be surprised if I repeat myself. All I can think of to blog about is stuff like food and shopping. But isn't that pretty much what I always blog about? And the Pastor is a complete and total laptop hog.
Totally and completely disappointed in the Rice place. Ewww. Ick. It's been the worst food experience, well, even my worst overall experience since I got here.
I have also been to a bake shop. Yippee for bake shops! I got a gingerbread man. Well, person. I'm not really sure of the gender of the cookie. It had orange eyes.
We have walked. We have ridden the bus. We have been to the library. The Pastor had a couple of meetings about his doctoral dissertation.
We were working at the library and I told the Pastor I did not understand his mad method, his serial killer approach, the way he works. He said it was not like a serial killer, a serial killer is deliberate. He is not. But that's nice to be with someone who is so full of surprises.
I did get to have proper English Tea! I had tea time! Tea with milk and sugar. It was pretty cheap too - 95 pence. So not even one pound. And they brought it out in a little pitcher with a cup and saucer.
It is difficult to spot an overweight person here. From what I can tell, portion sizes seem to be much, much smaller, which is the reason that my caffeine consumption has been drastically reduced. One of our meals came with "fizzy drinks", Coca Cola. The size of the drink was probably equivalent, if not even a bit smaller, to kiddie size drinks back home. And you do NOT get refills.
Today we didn't really spend any money, except I got coffee. I had schlepped some pre-packaged, microwavable noodle bowls and energy bars with me, so we munched on energy bars during the day and had the noodles for dinner. Yesterday, we just had dinner, and I hate to say we "just had dinner", because it was totally worth just having dinner. Our first course was brie and some kind of little, funky salad. Then the Pastor had chicken served on top of mashed potatoes. I had a bread pudding with with walnuts and celery. It was a fabulous meal, and I'm pretty sure that about 4 sticks of real butter was used in the preparation which is why it was so delish and such a good thing that we had only eaten once.
A man at the coffee shop calls me "my love". He says "yes my love", "what will you have, my love", "goodbye my love".
Last night, the Pastor and I were sitting across from one another, gazing into each other's misty eyes, smiling. So the Pastor started to speak. What would my love say? I, for one, was thinking about how much I love him and how romantic this was and how this is our honeymoon. He looked into my eyes and said, "I'm thinking of buying a skateboard."
We are staying in a "cottage." Isn't that romantic? It's somewhat akin to "Harry Potter's cupboard underneath the stairs", except I'm pretty sure Harry and the Owl had more space.
I found this place called "Primark". It was fairly cheap for clothes, and was a total madhouse. People were ripping things off the racks faster than they could re-stock. I bought another long peasant skirt, two tanks and an Indian caftan looking thing. Oh, and I tried on shoes. None fit, apparently British woman have fat feet.
The Pastor and I are traveling by train this weekend to go to London.
Have taken tons of photos, and will bombard you later.
England generalities and stereotypes
1. People park their cars half-way on the sidewalk and half-way in the street. What's up with that?
2. Everyone has those car locks you put on your steering wheel.
3. You say "hallow" and not "hello".
4. People drink liquor very early in the day. But not the Pastor, nor his wife.
5. People keep their cars very, very clean.
6. Everyone leaves the curtain to their flat open, so you can see in their flat, all the way through. But no matter what time of day, you never see any people inside.
7. No one is the least bit interested that you are American.
8. There are second hand stores everywhere.
My favorite thing that I have eaten here... how sad is this??? is when we went to the Tesco grocery store and the geniuses there have an olive bar! About 8 different kinds! I chose the green olives and black olives with squares of feta cheese.
don't drink the water
I always carry around and drink out of my plastic Starbucks bottle. We were leaving the other day and I explained to the Pastor that I couldn't get water out of the bathroom sink, I had to walk over to the kitchen, which is on the other side of campus, and fill it up out of my kitchen sink. And the Pastor thinks I am obsessive-compulsive just because of that.
We have been for Indian/ethnic type food several times. When you sit down, they bring you padamoms? which are like giant, tortilla shaped bugle potato chips, without the salt. Crispy and fun to munch. They bring out a dish of onions which look like they have some kind of red dye on them, as opposed to real red onions, and about 4 different kinds of dips/sauces which I could care less about. So we did this a few times and the last time they brought us the padamoms, the pastor got really peeved. He said did you order these? And I said nope. He seemed to get really upset that they brought us these snacks, he just wanted his sandwich. I didn't know they apparently charge you for this stuff. I had no idea!
As much as I talk about food and food related stuff, maybe I could get a job as a food critic?
Cheers.
p.s. Oh, and someone posted a comment that said "perhaps you should think about who is reading your blog..." Just to let you know, I never think about who is reading my blog. This is a completely self-centered, narcistic thing that I do.
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1 comment:
We have to park on the pavement over here because our roads are so narrow and cars won't pass if we park on the road. It is annoying though as it means pedestrians have to walk in the road in some places. If you came over now, in December, you'd see that cars are filthy from all the salt and grit on the roads. We've got 24 hour drinking now in places too, so if you fancy some alcohol you can have it even earlier (7am anyone?)
Primark is about as cheap as you can buy clothes over here. They're well known for following fashion and producing very quick knock-offs of high fashion items, but they're likely to fall apart quickly, and I wouldn't fancy knowing how many children in sweatshops are used to produce their clothes!
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