Writers on America

I've just started reading the articles at Writers on America from the US Department of State. It looks as though there is some interesting reading there. I noticed that the site has been translated - but only into Arabic. Clearly a propaganda piece, yet not entirely 'rah-rah'. Julia Alvarez, for example, talks of the difficulties she and her family faced on their arrival in the United States, and I would guess some of the other articles are equally honest about the imperfections of the American 'melting pot'.

Attitude

I remember someone telling me once shortly after I arrived in the US that a big difference between the US and the UK is the can-do attitude over here. If someone in the UK said they were thinking about maybe writing a book, the reaction would be, "What, you?" If someone in the US said the same thing the response would be "Go for it!"

I wonder how much that has changed with bloggers like Tom Reynolds, Petite Anglaise and others getting publishing deals now and becoming celebrities?

The British Abroad

To balance my earlier post on why some Americans shouldn't be allowed to travel - the British on vacation abroad don't have a particularly good image. Charles Bremner wrote in his Paris Weblog

In the old days, the Americans stood out among the visitors, for dress and behaviour. Now les anglais often draw attention to themselves while the Americans -- on the defensive in France -- try to blend in more.

Magwitch writes :

"unfortunately the most hideous people I’ve ever met when travelling are ignorant, load mouthed Brits who won’t attempt the language, the food or the culture and are generally obnoxious to everyone."

NoJags Neil writes

The perception of the British abroad is not a good one, and the absence of pissed-up promiscuous British twentysomethings on our recent holiday to Egypt was refreshing.

I don't think it's so much the individual Brit abroad, or even small groups, but mostly the larger groups that create this poor image. The chances are much higher that a Brit on a tour versus one travelling independently will be an obnoxious twit. Ditto for other nationalities.


The dark socks with sandals - such an attractive look - not! And the lobster-colored skin - de rigeur when travelling to warmer climes. Do men really still wear knotted hankies on their heads though? I doubt it nowadays, though I think I remember my grandfather doing that when sitting out in the sun in his garden.

Adam Dalton has written a far more comprehensive article about the British tourist overseas than I have time to attempt: The British Abroad - Not a Pretty Sight!

Easter

I don't remember a bunny ever having anything to do with Easter when I was growing up. He may have shown up at other people's houses, but certainly not ours, where Easter was a religious holiday. We got chocolate Easter eggs, but from our parents and grandparents rather than a bunny, and there were no Easter egg hunts. Dear Husband grew up with different traditions, although Easter was still definitely a religious holiday for his family. The Easter bunny always brought him and his brother things like balsa wood airplanes or a kite - toys with an outdoor focus. They always got a chocolate rabbit too. I would bet they got Peeps most years too as my father-in-law loves them. Sometimes the bunny brought them a toothbrush!

For the moment, the Little Americans in the house think Easter is all about the rabbit. The Little American probably knows more about Passover traditions than the religious nature of Easter even though she does have a book of Bible stories that she enjoys reading, and often reads the stories aloud to her brother.

As the kids were going to bed tonight they wanted to be sure that their baskets were put out in the living room and some carrots left for the bunny. They then had a very intense discussion with each other about how the bunny is going to get into the house. "Well we don't have a chimney, so he can't get in that way." "He can't come in through the door because the alarm would go off. He must come in through the window." They are evidently unaware of the concept of a motion-activated alarm or what the little boxes with the red lights in the corners of the rooms are for. They also haven't noticed that all the windows are locked. Hmm - I'd better go and check and make sure they haven't UNlocked any! I wouldn't put it past them!

I've just finished filling plastic eggs to hide around the back yard in the morning. The raccoons would find them if we put them out now! I don't know what they'd make of plastic eggs as opposed to the real thing (which I know they love), but I'm sure they'd check them out pretty thoroughly!

Dear Husband is looking over my shoulder and comments that he had contemplated going outside to collect some of the wild rabbit droppings from the lawn and leaving them next to the baskets in the living room! Fortunately, he decided not to bother.

A nation of wasteful abundance

I remember being shocked in my first few days at university here to see the amount of food and paper serviettes (napkins) that were wasted at every mealtime in the Dining Commons on campus. It seemed as though everyone took half a dozen napkins instead of just one. Lots of people took far more food than they could possibly eat and then threw it away. My culture shock at this was nothing however compared to Mark Mathabane's. Mark is about my age but grew up in the black township of Alexandra in South Africa under the apartheid regime. He ended up studying in the United States too. In his book Kaffir Boy in America (sequel to Kaffir Boy , the story of his childhood in South Africa) he writes of his first few years in the United States. He too was (unfavorably) impressed by the amount of wasted food. His shock was clearly far greater than mine of course. I got over it to some extent but the memory of the shock is still there.

Occasionally as I look at our well-stocked pantry and wonder what we should have for dinner, I think how spoiled we are. We bulk buy because it's convenient. We can store far more food than we would be able to in the typical English house. Although we might not be eating what we wanted, we would have enough food for several weeks should something happen to stop us from getting to the stores.

It's not only food, but all the other 'stuff' in our lives that is embarrassingly abundant. I assuage my guilt a little by trying to throw as little out as possible. No, that does not mean hoarding! We recycle paper, glass, and plastic, and would even if our town did not require it. I pass on outgrown kids clothing to friends with smaller children, or to local agencies that collect such stuff. Recently we have used Freecycle as a way of passing things on that we have no use for anymore. (Freecycle exists in many other countries including in the UK too.) It's a small thing to do, but why throw things out when someone might be happy to reuse them? Enjoy the abundance, but cut down on the waste!

37% American

My quiz results from the blogthings "How American Are You?" quiz:

You Are 37% American

America: You don't love it or want to leave it. But you wouldn't mind giving it an extreme make over.

How American Are You?

Dear Husband (who was born and raised here) scored 44%.
I passed the blogthings US Citizenship test though:

You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 7 out of 10 correct!

Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test?

Then again, blogthings says I belong in the UK:

You Belong in the UK

Blimey! A little proper, a little saucy. You're so witty and charming... No one notices your curry breath

What English Speaking Country Are You?

Chewing gum

Growing up in the UK, I always thought of chewing gum as quintessentially American. It was another of those nasty American habits, like not pronouncing words properly, that marked one as boorish and uncultured. I knew people who chewed gum, but it wasn't something I did. Chewing without eating seemed rather pointless and, anyway, my dentist had advised me not to bother as I had some problems with my jaw that he said chewing gum would aggravate. I remember noticing that French teenagers seemed to chew gum more often than the English did. (They smoked more too.)

My dislike of gum is apparently typically British - as Cadbury's starts a large advertising campaign to launch Trident gum onto the British market, the BBC reported today:

most people think it looks "common" and "uncouth", according to government research. And that includes the 50% of the population who chew it.

My issue with gum chewers when I was in school was the fact that they didn't seem to know how to dispose of their gum. Of course one reason my peers didn't dispose of their gum in more appropriate ways was because they weren't supposed to be chewing it in the first place. I worked for some years in a school where gum chewing was not allowed and the teachers seemed to be fighting a losing battle to stop the kids from chewing gum or to get them to throw it in a trash can when they had finished chewing it. Then I worked at a school where it was allowed unless individual teachers asked students not to chew gum in their classes. There seemed to be very little problem with finding it in places it shouldn't have been. Then a new regime changed the rules - no more gum permitted, and suddenly there was gum on the ground outside buildings, under desks, stuck on the walls . . .

Just as I've become used to American pronunciation, I've become used to seeing people chew gum without judging their social worth. I still don't do it myself, but I really don't think more people in the UK chewing gum indicates the decline in standards that some people over there are bemoaning.

Citizenship tests

I wrote back in July 2006 that I only scored 65% on the "Do you have what it takes to become a citizen?" quiz about American citizenship. There's a UK equivalent online too. Some of the things you're expected to know for the UK test don't seem particularly useful pieces of cultural knowledge, which I would have thought was the point of the test. I scored 85% on it anyway - better than on the American one, although I admit I guessed at the answers to some of the questions that I got right! Maybe I am still more British than American!

Why Some Americans Shouldn't be Allowed to Travel

Okay, there are probably some Brits who shouldn't be allowed to travel either, and these stories are probably apocryphal, but this was moderately amusing anyway:

The following are actual stories provided by travel agents

Smarties vs M&Ms

The candy known as Smarties in the USA is not the same as the Smarties sold in the UK. There's no chocolate involved at all in the American ones so, really, what's the point? You can buy English Smarties here at specialist stores, though of course you pay a premium for an imported product.

I had always thought I preferred Smarties to M&Ms, but this Christmas I was given both a tube of Smarties and a bag of dark chocolate M&Ms. Now it may be that the Smarties were stale, as I've found imported goods often can be, but I have to say the dark M&Ms were actually better. Except for the orange Smarties of course, because I love orange flavoured chocolate and the orange Smarties really and truly have orange flavoured chocolate inside them! (I always thought that was a myth and that the power of suggestion was convincing me it was true, but the Smarties website confirms it.) Actually, given that the Smarties were in a tube, it's likely that they were rather old as they are no longer sold in tubes in the UK. I guess I need some fresh Smarties to compare against the dark M&Ms. Anyone want to send me some?

I weigh WHAT?????

I'll admit it, I've put on too much weight in the last few years. I have boxes of clothes in the basement that no longer fit. I keep them because I'm convinced that there will come a day when I'll fit back into them. Yeah, right - but keeping them gives me hope that it might happen.

I'm not sure if the weight gain is something that would have happened anyway, or is part of the process of becoming more American. After all, the statistics show that Americans tend to be overweight, so if I'm becoming more American I must therefore be putting on weight. Nah, I think it's just a part of the middle-age thing, the mommy thing (finishing off what's on my kids' plates), and the lack of time to exercise because I'm a mommy with a full-time job thing.

Anyway, I know I'm overweight and have been trying to do something about it. That involves occasionally stepping on the bathroom scales to see if I'm fooling myself in thinking that I might actually have lost a pound or two. A couple of weeks ago I stepped on the scales and got a shock - the numbers weren't anywhere close to what I was expecting. They were way off! In fact, they didn't even make any sense. I was rather annoyed that my expensive bathroom scales, that also check my body fat percentage, appeared to be broken. Fortunately, before I threw them out, I realised what had happened. One of the Little Americans in the house had reset them so that instead of showing my weight in pounds they showed my weight in stone and pounds. Americans don't use stone and pounds, but in England they do, so I was able to 'translate'. Then I tried to reset the scale to measure in pounds again. I couldn't figure out how. Dear husband couldn't figure out how either, and the instructions were of course long gone. Neither of the Little Americans would admit to having messed with the scales and certainly neither of them had any clue how to reset them.

Despite the seasonal weight gain I was anticipating back in October, the numbers on the scale are steadily getting smaller week by week though so it doesn't really matter which measuring system they are set to :-) Maybe there's hope yet that I will eventually fit back into the clothes I've been keeping! They'll be completely out-of-date of course, but that's not the point.

A deprived childhood?

We were having a family conversation recently about what to have for Christmas lunch. Growing up in the UK, it was almost always turkey. I remember having goose once, but turkey was the traditional choice. Here in the US we always have turkey at Thanksgiving of course, and with Christmas only a month later we in this household always end up discussing whether we should have turkey 'yet again' or have something else. Personally, I like turkey and would be quite happy to eat it 'yet again', i.e. for the second time in the calendar year. However, so long as I'm not doing the cooking (and I never do for special occasions) I don't really mind because I know my dear husband will always produce a wonderful meal whatever the choice. The decision tends to be to buy some really good beef, and some salmon for those of us who don't really like beef. The little ones are encouraged to have some of each. It's very nice of the chef to cook fish for me when he hates it so much! He does a good job too!

Well, we were having the usual discussion and the Little American overheard us. She apparently then spent some time thinking about it. On the way home from school a day or so later she asked if she could request something special for Christmas lunch. "What would you like?" I asked. "A really special treat. Can we PLEASE go to McDonald's for Christmas lunch?" "You want to go WHERE? WHEN? You have got to be kidding!!!"

Actually, it wasn't such a bizarre request. You have to understand that McDonald's is not somewhere we ever go. The Little American has had food from that establishment precisely once, and I can tell you exactly when: she'd had 10 stitches after tripping and slamming her head* into a wall, and her father (for some inexplicable reason**) decided that it would help make her feel better if he went through the drive-through and bought her some french fries. So, yes, to her it is something special. However, although we may be depriving her of a truly American childhood, Christmas lunch at McDonald's will only happen over her parents' dead bodies.

* As my mother used to say, "Not to worry, it's only her head!"
** They'd already given her ice cream at the hospital - she needed another treat?

I guess I'm not a real American

First, shoot your turkey

Ask a class of seven and eight year olds how you prepare a turkey for Thanksgiving and you get some interesting answers. In today's class a large proportion of the boys' answers started with variations of "First, kill your turkey." Yes, we live in a rural area where there are flocks of wild turkeys, and people do hunt them.

The Littlest American agreed when I asked him where we are going to get our turkey from for tomorrow's lunch. "In the woods. First you have to shoot it and then you have to get the chicken out of it."

Unclear on the concept

The Little American made a 'Happy Thanksgiving' card for her cousins in London yesterday. I can't blame her for not realising that Thanksgiving is an American holiday given the number of American adults who have asked me over the years how we celebrate Thanksgiving in the UK or if I miss my family at Thanksgiving.

In fact when I asked her, she really had very little clue what Thanksgiving is about at all - this despite having been 'taught' about it in school every year for at least the last three years and at daycare before that.

We emailed the card to her cousins anyway and there will be a forthcoming trip to the library to find some good books about Thanksgiving.

Unicorn bits

When I left the UK 21 years ago, Halloween was not a particularly big deal there. We never went trick-or-treating and didn't carve pumpkins. I do remember bobbing for apples. I also remember trying to carve what I think must have been turnips at Guides - boy, was that hard! One of my nephews celebrates his birthday at the end of October and for one of his birthday parties when he was very little I sent over a box of Halloween related stuff - paper plates and cups, and decorations. My sister had asked me to send them over because it wasn't easy to find them in the UK. She's told me that's no longer the case. I believe it as my brother has just sent me pictures of the pumpkins he carved with his kids this week - beautifully done - and the kids and his wife trying on their costumes before the big night. Fun as it is for them, I think it's a bit sad really - another example of the homogenization of cultures.

We live in a neighborhood with lots of kids and Halloween is definitely a big deal here. I forget how many pounds of candy we got through last year and I'm a bit worried I haven't bought enough for this year. Of course I'd rather have too much than too little. The leftover candy always gets eaten eventually, so it's not wasted. It does contribute significantly to the seasonal weight gain though - Halloween followed by Thanksgiving and Christmas. Three occasions for overeating, all too close together. We have neighbors who give out stickers instead of candy, which I think is a great idea. A dentist friend always has a bowl of candy and a bowl of toothbrushes. It's amazing how popular the toothbrushes are with the kids!

Many schools here are careful about how they deal with Halloween as there are families that strongly disapprove of it for religious reasons (even to the point of keeping their kids home from school for the day.) The Littlest American had a Halloween celebration at his pre-school on Friday though - they were trying to spread out the sugar high. He had a wonderful time wearing his frog costume and trick-or-treating. He said his favorite treat of the day was the 'unicorn bits' on the cupcakes. It took us a while to figure out that he was talking about candy corn - a popular candy at this time of year. We asked who told him it was called unicorn bits and he insists he decided on that name for himself. Seems like a good name for it.

Lingering memories of last Christmas

The Littlest American was asking recently if we can go to see the baby penguins and the house where Father Christmas lives again this year. I had to think for a moment to realize that effectively what he was asking for was another trip to the UK for Christmas - we spent Christmas there last year and went to see Father Christmas at the zoo. There are a host of reasons why we can't do that this year so he is going to be sorely disappointed.

Meanwhile the Little American is proving herself to be surprisingly bilingual. On our trip last December we'd only been in London 24 hours or so before she started sounding like her cousins. Even now when she really wants something she switches to calling me 'Mummy' instead of 'Mommy'. This morning she commented that Daddy didn't buy her any of the sweeties she saw at Stop & Shop. Upon questioning her, I discovered that she did indeed mean 'sweeties' and not 'candy' - she'd seen some Smarties on the shelves of imported foods. Smarties are from England and therefore are 'sweeties' whereas M&Ms are 'candy'! Rats - I knew I should have been speaking to her in French all along so she could be truly bilingual! I guess it's not too late, though Spanish might prove more useful to her in the long run around here.

The wonders of technology?

American education blogger Will Richardson wrote about his most recent trip to the UK this week. He feels that in some respects schools in the UK are ahead of the US in their use of technology. He mentions the proposal that by 2008 every student in the UK should have a digital portfolio as one example - it's a concept that has not been bandied about much here in the US yet.

I am sure the reality is that there are some schools in the US that are well ahead of the curve just as there are schools in the UK that are leading the way in technology use. Will surely met some of those in the UK who are most interested in it - they invited him to come and speak to them after all! Mr Chalk, a teacher in an inner city comprehensive somewhere in the UK, wrote back on September 14th:

The kids still share textbooks, discipline has gone out of the window, lessons have become crowd control. [...] There is no shortage of computers however.

OK, so Mr Chalk is often very cynical and writes with an eye towards entertaining, but clearly simply throwing technology into schools and requiring it of kids and teachers is not a panacea. Will has a very positive attitude to educational technology - it's his livelihood after all. Mr Chalk sees what other things the money might have been spent on rather than computers.

The question is, will the investment in technology pay off? Will it inspire kids to learn, and more importantly to learn how to learn? (And if I visit a couple of schools in the UK on my next trip there, can I write the trip off as a business expense?)

Supersize me

My parents have just spent a couple of weeks in the United States. Not visiting us, sad to say, but travelling to interesting places such as the Grand Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, Pike's Peak. (Oh, and Wyoming which they dismissed as 'boring - avoid it at all costs!') My mother wanted to know why I hadn't warned her what she would get if she ordered ribs. She claimed the plate of food was so large it arrived in a pantechnicon. OK, so she has a tendency to exagerate, but her point was that she still finds American portion sizes overly large. She complained that she put on a significant amount of weight in the short time she was here. Hmm - I guess despite thinking the portions were too large, she indulged anyway?

Suburban assault vehicle

Is this another step in my Americanization? This summer my 8 year-old Chevy Malibu ticked over 190,000 miles and it was time for a new vehicle. It needed 4 new tires, the air conditioning had died, and it was leaking oil. It needed far more money poured into it than it was worth. After much thought and lots of test drives, I decided on an SUV - a Toyota RAV4. I drove the Toyota Matrix and the Pontiac Vibe, which are basically the same car and they were OK. But then I drove a used Subaru that was on the lot at the Pontiac dealer's. (I would have liked to test drive a new one, but I couldn't find anywhere to park at our local Subaru dealer's, the lot was so full of cars!) The Subaru had a lot more oomph to it which was nice, so I decided to try the RAV4 and the Honda CRV. The CRV somehow felt very truck like/barebones. I think it had something to do with the strange traytable between the 2 front seats. The RAV4 on the other hand was very comfortable and just felt right. ("And the first car Goldilocks tried didn't have enough horsepower, the second felt too much like a truck, but the third was just right." OK, so I tried more than 3 cars - I'm clearly spending way too much time with little kids when I start seeing my life in terms of fairy stories )

Technically the RAV4 is a 'compact crossover SUV', which means that it's not as huge and gas/petrol guzzling as some. It's supposed to get around 28 mpg in highway driving, which means I'll average less than that. I haven't checked to see exactly what I'm getting, but I will do soon. Although this vehicle almost certainly gets worse mileage than the one I just got rid of, I've done a huge amount to reduce my contribution to global warming simply by switching jobs. I used to do a commute to work and back of over 130 miles a day and now I'm commuting less than 30 miles a day, so I don't feel quite so guilty about buying a car that gets fewer mpg than my last one. Eventually I think I'd like a hybrid. Hopefully, by the time I buy my next vehicle there will be more of them and the concerns about battery life and cost of replacing the batteries will be non-existent.

The RAV4 is by far the biggest vehicle I've ever owned, but probably the most comfortable too, despite the fact that I bought the base model with only a couple of options. It has 4WD, which I decided I really wanted for the new commute. The old commute was long, but on major highways which are always very well maintained in the winter, and I didn't have to go in on snow days anyway. I still won't have to go in to work on snow days, but the road is not a major highway, it's very steep in spots and quite twisty (and worse if I take the shortcut that cuts a mile or two off the route.) I know enough not to think that the 4WD is going to make me invincible, but it will be reassuring to have.

One really big surprise - the insurance is only $10/month more for exactly the same coverage! Oh, and the same vehicle (or the closest I could find listed anyway) in the UK would have cost me around $10,000 more!