Righteous mold month

I get more spam comments than real ones at this blog. That's OK - Blogger filters them out very effectively and it takes no time to hit the delete button. Some of them are quite entertaining though because the English is so bad. I'm not sure if they are the result of someone using machine translation or not using a bi-lingual dictionary very well. Either way, they are very funny. They still don't get me to click on the link though!

"Righteous mold month I was stuck in a jammed elevator and boy was I tickled pink to beget my trusty LED flashlight so I didn't bleed for so scared."

Where have I gone?

No, I'm not away on some exciting vacation . . . Just very busy with work and family, and not inspired to blog. No, not even about the Royal Wedding although it was such an obvious topic - everyone else seems to have covered it very thoroughly.

It's a small world

I live in a small New England town - the kind of place where you have to be careful what you say about anyone because there are days when it seems like everyone knows everyone else. All kinds of people that you wouldn't think would know each other, do. They went to school together, or they are related by marriage, or they work(ed) together. It's actually one of the reasons I like living here. I wouldn't want to live in a city where, I'm told, people often don't even know who their neighbors are.

The world can be small like this New England town too.  I was once working at a school where we had an exchange teacher from Europe for a year. She had a friend from the UK come to visit, and somehow we figured out that the friend had been my parents' neighbor 30 years earlier when they were working in Turkey and I was a baby!

Last week, Danielle of brit abroad in USA and I figured out that not only did we grow up in the same corner of the UK, but in the same town and a few houses apart on the same street! Given the efforts most bloggers make to preserve their anonymity, it's really pretty amazing that our conversation got that far. Once we had made that connection, I am sure Danielle suddenly worried if I knew her older sister who has been so unpleasant to her. Fortunately, I don't - in fact, given that Danielle is younger than me, and her sister is older, I didn't know either of them when we lived on the same street.

It's a good lesson in how, although we may try to hide behind a blog name, in the end we are not as anonymous as we would like to think. We give things away about ourselves with every post. Some bloggers, in addition to using a pen name and being careful about what they say, choose not to make their email address public or use a special email address for their blog. DO NOT assume that your 'real' email address will stay private though. If you have associated it with your blog by having copies of comments sent to it rather than the one on your blog, you run the risk of having that email address exposed. I am assuming that if you have created an email address to go with your blog (as I have) then that's the one you would prefer the world of strangers out there to know.

In the last week, pretty much all the Blogger blogs I have posted on have 'bounced' my comments back to me. I say 'bounced' because that's the email message I got, even though my comment appeared just fine on the blog. I've been getting messages from blogger.bounces.google.com with the subject line Delivery Status Notification (Failure), and the message

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

followed by the email address. In many cases, that address is NOT the email address that is posted publicly on the blogger's website, but one that is clearly a more personal one. (i.e. 'Smithfamily@isp.com' or 'yourname@placeofemployment.com' instead of 'bloggername@yahoo.com') So, if you want to keep that more personal email address private, don't have comments forwarded to it! Otherwise you may find the world becoming smaller than you would like as people figure out more about you than you had intended!

On the buses

I entered a giveaway on the Pond Parleys website at the beginning of the month for a set of pictures from Miniature Picture Cards and was delighted when I actually won! That's the third prize I've won online in the last six months out of five contests I've entered. If only I had that kind of success rate in buying lottery tickets!

The Miniature Picture Cards site is based in the US, but owned by an expat Brit, Roger Penycate who brought his business trading in miniature pictures and reproductions with him when he immigrated to the US in 2002. Roger has  large collection of cards portraying many different subjects, not all British. I said that if I won I would like a set of pictures of British buses. One of my grandfathers was a tram driver, and then a bus driver when the trams were replaced by buses, so although there are no Birkenhead Corporation buses in the selection Roger sent me, the set is still meaningful to me.

I like Crankymonkeys in London

LBJ at Crankymonkeys in London had a giveaway of some Christmas ornaments and I won! It made my day - thanks LBJ!

If you haven't visited her blog, check it out - she's an expat who grew up in Estonia and then the USA. She moved to Australia as an adult, but now lives in London with her husband and two children. I only found her blog fairly recently, but I've added it to my list of must-reads.

Search terms

Here are some more of the search terms people have used that brought them to my blog in the last few weeks. Some are fairly obvious. It's gratifying to see at least one person (probably my mother) was clearly specifically looking for my blog.

• almost american blog

There was the usual handful who appear to have an agenda they are looking to reinforce:

• why americans shouldn't travel
• americans should only speak english
• no one is more american than anyone else
• americans only speak english

Others who appeared to be looking for the answer to a specific question

• my license photo does not look like me, should I get it retaken?
• why americans only speak one language
• why do americans only speak one language?
• how to know what turkey to shoot
• why is there february vacation

I didn't understand what some of them were after or why Google would have brought them to my blog in search of it:

• Wednesday in hat
• tornado american hat
• out of office humping-mania
  

I don't believe I have ever mentioned humping on this blog before, let alone any kind of humping mania!! (DH wants to know "Is there an in-office humping mania?")

• m&ms vs smarties

was back, along with

• m&ms vs smarties vs skippers

Never heard of skippers, but I assume it must be another kind of candy.
Apparently at least one Russian-speaker was in search of information about Doctor Who:

• доктор кто

This one I thought was somewhat scary:

• shooting my own thanksgiving turkey in supermarket

I hope this person found out that it is NOT OK to shoot your own turkey in the supermarket. Indeed, there should never be any need to shoot the turkeys in the supermarket as they are always dead already!

I wonder if this one was an American living in the UK:

• britain has too many rules

So do a lot of places. Some of the ones without rules aren't places I would want to live!

Search terms

I do like looking through the list of of search terms used by people who found my blog. Searches for Smarties vs M&Ms seem to have finally stopped. Here are some of the recent ones:

• scared of wasps
  Aren't we all?
  
• black currants, how to eat?
  I could get really sarcastic with this one, something along the lines of 'put them in your mouth', but it's actually not an unreasonable question. How do you eat something that sour? By adding lots of sugar of course!
  
• wasp nest blackcurrant bush
  Not sure how this is any different to a wasp's nest anywhere else. Presumably you don't want it and want to get rid of it.
  
• are there any other plants that look like blackcurrants but may be poisen. please show picture.
  If you think you've just poisoned yourself, looking up the answer on a stranger's potentially unreliable blog is perhaps not the best idea. Did you notice that s/he said please to a computer!
  
• how to learn speaking english well with red lavel
  I have a feeling this person was probably looking for a specific textbook.
  
• i am 9 and liking for a mice
  I wonder who taught this cat to type?
  
• glaswegian accent scary
  It can be, can't it? (For the record, one of my grandmothers was from Glasgow and, despite many years of not living there, never lost her accent!) I wonder just what this person wanted to know about a scary Glaswegian accent though?
  
• how do i wash dishes at a tent campsite?
  A questions asked by someone who's only ever used a dishwashing machine perhaps? Depends a little on the campsite. In France the sites we visited often had sinks dedicated to washing dishes. Camping at state parks here in the US we boil water on the stove, pour it into a bowl and do the dishes in the bowl, remembering of course to have some clean water to wash the suds off in case they poison us ;-)
  
• how long can i drive in the usa on my englishy liecence?
  That depends on the state I believe, though I may be wrong.
  
• pronounce: oregano
  I hate questions like this - people are either trying to make me sound more British or more American than I want to be.
  
• britain has too many rules
  Hmm - the obvious retort if the searcher is not British is to say "Well, go home then!"
  
• american back to the us after london culture shock
  If an American has to leave London because of culture shock, all I can say is they'd better not leave the US again because the rest of the world will probably be even more shocking! Not that you can't get culture shock traveling in the USA!
  

Finally, the following two continue to turn up regularly:

• the reasons americans shouldn't travel
• why americans shouldn't travel
  No one from any country should travel if they're not prepared to tolerate at least a little culture shock, try some new experiences, and accept that one of the delights of traveling is to visit somewhere that is different from home!
  

Visitor from the UK - guest post

Since starting to blog, and choosing to blog much of the time about being an expat, I have met many other expats online. Michael Harling is an American living in the UK. If you haven't visited his blog, Postcards From Across the Pond, I highly recommend it. Although I haven't bought his book yet, I'm thinking it would probably be a good purchase for my husband before we go to the UK again. Actually, given how much I enjoy his writing, I should just buy it for myself. Michael is currently travelling around the world, from one blog to another and I invited him to stop off here.

Quiet day today. I think I had one too many mint juleps at Wendy and Rob's last night. But when you’re embarking upon a World Tour (even if it is the virtual world) you can’t let a little thing like a hangover slow you down, so my pounding head, dry throat, sandpaper eyeballs and I all got up at 5AM to catch the 8:27 flight out of Little Rock. When Almost American picked me up in Chicopee this afternoon, I was still feeling a little fragile so as soon as we got to her place she made me tea and toast; she even cut it into soldiers for me.

It's nice to be back here in Massachusetts, only one of two states whose name I can't spell without having to look it up (the other is Connecticut).

I used to live here, you know; when my first marriage ended, I moved into a flat in Pittsfield with my buddy and his girlfriend and her two-year old child. I had no other place to go and they were kind enough to take me in. Overnight I went from living in a four bedroom house with one and a half baths, dining room, office, full basement and redwood porch to sleeping on a sofa in a second floor walk-up. It was not the high point of my life.

That unhappy incident did not sully my feelings for Massachusetts, however. It's a lovely state, and I have many happy memories of climbing its mountains, visiting its quaint and touristy towns and peeping at its leaves. A drive along the Mass Pike at the peak of autumn is about the prettiest sight in the world (barring, of course, a drive up the The Northway, through the Adirondack State Park). Almost American is lucky—having left England, she is now living in a place just as beautiful.

It is amazing how much Britain and New England resemble each other, terrain-wise, at least. Where I live in Sussex, the weald and downs look much like—and are every bit as fetching as—the Hudson Valley and Berkshire Mountains. And further north, the Scottish highlands have more than a passing resemblance to the Adirondacks and the mountains of Maine. But seeing as how they used to be part of the same land mass (or so they tell me, it was a few years before I was born) perhaps it isn't so amazing after all.

Back then, of course, when we all lived together, we all spoke the same and things were a little less confusing; an elevator was an elevator, not a lift, and a car had a trunk and a hood, not a boot and a bonnet, and aluminium had not yet developed that extraneous syllable. It wasn't until we drifted apart that the Brits started needlessly searching for new ways to pronounce “oregano,” “lieutenant” and “schedule” when they already had perfectly acceptable pronunciations. At least that's how it looks from this side of the Atlantic. Or perhaps my thinking is still a bit muddled by mint julep fallout.

I think I'd better have another cup of tea and some toast soldiers, then I'll get back to you on that language thing.

Would you like to participate in the
2009 KINDNESS of STRANGERS TOUR?
Visit the Tour Page to sign up or to view the latest Tour updates.

Michael Harling is an American author living in the UK undertaking a virtual world tour via the kindness of strangers.

Search terms

I find it interesting to look at the search terms that have led people to my blog. There's a wide variety and looking at them I see how some led to my blog, but not others:

would you immigrate to the American state
graphs of culture shock
American almost monarchy
American friendliness versus British reticence
filling out a green visa on the plane
American culture time flies when you’re having fun
American bizarre
mcdonalds scottish restaurant radio bam
average American dinner time
things you can put maple syrup on
Americans shocked at British vacation time
places Americans shouldn’t travel
mailing maple syrup overseas
advantages of drive-thru weddings
drive thru bars
when is dinner time for most Americans
future plans and ambitions
statistics on people who cook casserole

The winners in terms of sheer frequency though are variations on the following two:

why Americans shouldn’t travel – 8%
Smarties vs m&ms – 16%!

The Why Some Americans Shouldn't be Allowed to Travel post was lazyblogging - little more than a link to another web page. The Smarties post was written back in January 2007.

Ooh - thanks Kat!

Expat Kat at The Pea Green Boat just gave me this award:
According to the authors of this award, this blog invests and believes in the PROXIMITY - nearness in space, time and relationships! These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award."

So thanks Kat! I pass this on to Da Goof at Another Redesign of the Wheel, Laura of Are we Nearly There Yet Mummy?, Limey at Brits n' Bobs, Expat 21 at Expat Abroad, Maximus of Home and Other Thoughts From Abroad, Canoez at Paddling Upstream, Nicola of Some Mothers Do 'av Em, and Tasha at WAHM-BAM. If you haven't visited any of these blogs before - do take a look!

Becoming American part 2

Joseph O'Neil was the second author interviewed for NPR's series on Becoming American. He talked of how the decision to emigrate has become much less decisive than it was. I think he was comparing immigration today to the waves of Irish immigration in the past when those who left knew they were unlikely ever to return to their homeland, when he says that nowadays:

"You can go backwards and forwards as much as you like, subject to legal and financial restrictions. And you can stay in touch with everyone back home. You can read their blogs, you can speak to them on the phone."

You don't have to go that far back though - even 20 years ago it was a very different experience than it is today. Phone calls home cost dollars per minute instead of cents, there was no such thing as the Internet yet (as far as the general public was concerned anyway) and blogging certainly hadn't been invented. The experience must be very different for a new immigrant (or even an exchange student) in any country than it was for those of us who moved pre-Internet and cheap phone calls! I wonder if it doesn't have the potential for worsening culture shock in some respects because it allows you to cling to home? Or maybe for some it lessens the disorientation because you don't have that shock, like jumping into cold water, of being completely immersed in the foreign culture?

I'm not dumb

I know these online tests of 'intelligence' are really very silly, but I still like it when I do well!



Just wondering though, who on earth would post a score like this on their blog?


Especially when with just a little savvy you can change it to one like this:


And which one was my real score? I'll let you figure that out!

Search engine stats

I was a little surprised looking at the stats for this blog tonight to find that almost a quarter of the people who got here via a search engine had been looking for information about Smarties and or M&Ms! I wrote that post 20 months ago! All those readers and no one has sent me any English Smarties yet to test my theory that the last tube I had was stale :-( Even more surprising is that it is not the page that has received the most hits. Despite 'mad cows' not seeming to show up as an often searched-for term, that page is the most often viewed after my home page!

The little bloggers!

Back in February, DD decided that she wanted a blog of her own. It seemed as though it would be a good way to get her to improve her writing, so I set one up for her. She is very enthusiastic about it, though she does not always follow through and write blog posts about all the things she decides are 'bloggable'.

My brother in the UK has set up a blog for my niece too, and it is interesting to see what she blogs about. There are some nice intercultural exchanges going on as we share stories from our lives. We hear from my brother and sister more often now that we have yet another way to communicate.

Last Saturday DS and I saw a bear in the backyard. Later, as we were going somewhere in the car he was still babbling with excitement about the bear. I was only half listening at first, but then suddenly I heard him say, "I'll have to write about the bear on my blog."

"Blog? You don't have a blog!"

"But I need one so I can write about the bear!"

So I set the blog up, and in the first two days he dictated three posts. He had a little difficulty understanding how it worked at first. We posted one story about the bear, and then he wanted to add to it later. I explained we could do that, but seeing as Aunty England had already read his first post, we should probably just write a second one. He wasn't too sure about that. He also didn't understand at first that he could actually write about things other than the bear. Nor did he grasp the concept of the interface being the same for his blog and for mine when creating posts, so he threw a hissy fit when he saw me writing a post for my blog as he thought I was changing his blog.

So both kids now have blogs and we're a four blog household. Their blogs are open by invitation only, but I am still teaching them to be very careful about what they post on them. No real names, and we think carefully about what photos we use.

And to think it wasn't that many years ago that my brother and I could not even send each other email because the systems we were on didn't 'talk' to each other! Now I have a variety of email addresses for different purposes. When I say we're going to call grandma, the kids automatically head for the computer rather than the phone, assuming I mean we're going to use Skype. They want the instant gratification of a reply to an email the same or the next day, not a letter a couple of weeks later. They ask if we can scan their artwork to send it to grandma, and they expect responses to their blog postings within the hour! Although their computer use is limited (no Club Penguin or Webkins) compared to some of their peers who already have unlimited internet access from computers in their bedrooms (disasters waiting to happen), they are still very firmly a part of the digital generation.

How hard is this to read?

Hmm - I tried this test on some of the blogs that I read and most are apparently written at an elementary school reading level, with a few at the junior high level. I did finally find one though that the test said is written at the 'Genius' level and one at the University level. Perhaps that explains why I haven't read either of them in several weeks - I'm too lazy to expend that much reading effort. They both happen to be academic blogs, so the reading level is appropriate. I guess I have to wonder if the writing (reading) level of my blog is appropriate to the subject matter? If I'm not writing something academic, should it be written at an easier reading level? Can I make myself write like that? Would I want to? And as for my reading, 'should' I be reading more sites that are 'harder' to read? (Not that I'm sure how they've determined the readability anyway.)

I'm not going to obsess over it. I'm going to keep reading the blogs I find interesting, and writing what I feel like talking about.