Merry Christmas!

No snow here, but it still feels like Christmas.

Thanks again to LJB at Crankymonkeys for some new ornaments for the tree! Santa brought a couple of new ones too - the red and white baubles with writing on them.

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.

Stripping with the Stars

Colleagues at work are obsessed with TV programs like Dancing with the Stars and get into protracted conversations at lunchtime over who they think should be voted off the show next. Personally, I couldn't care less about shows like that. I found this spoof quite funny though:

Tagged

Kathryn at Marmite and Fluff tagged me.
The rules are:
1. Link to the person who tagged you.  Done.
2. Paste these rules on your blog post.  Done.
3. Respond to the following prompts (in bold).  Done.
4. Add a prompt of your own and answer it. Hmm - in the interest of getting this post completed this year, I'm going to skip this step.
5. Tag a few other bloggers at the bottom of the post. Done (kind of).
6. Leave "Tagged You" notices on their blog/Facebook. 
7. Let the person who tagged you know when you've written the post. Done


1) The best investment you ever made:
The time spent getting to know my husband when we were dating. Because of my work schedule, it was often difficult to get to see each other, but we spent a lot of time on the phone, chatting online and emailing each other. Next best investment - travelling as much as I could while I was young and single, even though the list of places I want to see is still very long.

2) If you could’ve written any book, directed any movie, and composed any song, which three would you pick:
Simply because of the money it generated and the change it made in JK Rowling's lifestyle, I wish I had written the Harry Potter series. From the impact his work has had over the generations, I wish I had written anything by Shakespeare. Which movie and song do I wish I had written? Hmm - that's harder as movies and songs are not as important in my life as books. Maybe Picnic at Hanging Rock, for a movie (though I haven't seen it in years and it may not be what I remember!) and something by the Beatles for a song.

3) Weirdest quirk:  
DH says that would be my . . . SQUIRREL!! . . . tendency to get easily distracted. I don't think that's weird - I know lots of people with ADD! I'm sure there are plenty of other people who would take 10 days or more to answer the questions in this meme!

4) One wish immediately granted:
Decent, affordable, health care coverage for everyone.

5) Most expensive hobby
Jewelry making or knitting. Jewelry making - obvious - even making your own jewelry is not cheap if you have expensive tastes. No silver-colored or gold-colored beads and findings thank you, I want the real thing! Yarn is stupidly expensive nowadays, though thanks to Ravelry and growing confidence in my own design abilities, I haven't had to buy any patterns in a while.

6) An inexhaustible gift card at which store
The Apple store or my local yarn store.

7) In another lifetime, you'd be:
More athletic.

8) The most famous/interesting member of your family tree:
No one particularly famous in our family tree that I know of, but my mother has some interesting stories about her great-grandmother, Hettie:

"her sons would bring their best clothes to my grandma’s house … if they left  them at home, Hettie took them to the pawn shop to get cash for drink.
On one occasion she was badly burnt when she tipped a pan of boiling  porridge on her lap… she was sitting by the fire brewing the stuff, when she tipped it down herself.  There was an implication that she was the worse for drink when it happened, because despite  extensive damage to lower abdomen and thighs, she was reported to feel no great  pain."

9) The most famous person you've ever met:
King Hussein of Jordan. He died too young.

If you're looking for blog fodder and feel like answering these questions, consider yourself tagged, but don't forget to let me know when your post is up!

Christmas shopping

I am one of those mothers who likes to take her kids to museums for fun and buy her kids educational toys. Fortunately, most of the time my kids seem to like this! Our trip to the UK this summer had a Roman theme - Bath, Chedworth Roman Villa, Roman tour of Chester, Wroxeter Roman city . . . So when I saw that the British Museum shop has a free shipping offer on right now - including to overseas addresses - I had to take a look. Oh dear! I could spent quite a lot of money there, and not just on the children! Well, I'm sure I could get some of those things here in the US, but some of the things I like  are British Museum exclusives. Hmm - may have to browse some more and put a wish list together!

By the way, if you click on my link to the shop and end up buying something there, you could help defray my expenses shopping there as I do get a commission on purchases made in the next ten days through my link.

Sorry? What did you say?

English teachers in non-English-speaking countries face the dilemma of which English to teach. Often their school will have a preference for English English or American English, usually based on the textbooks they are using. I remember when I was at university in France one of the lecturers telling me that the way I pronounced 'bath' was wrong because I had a northern accent rather than the 'BBC accent' he wanted his students to learn. Equally, my lecturers back in the UK were a little taken aback when I returned from my year in France with a very strong southern French accent. Given that most people will retain something of a 'foreign' accent when they learn a second language, the most important thing to my mind is to be able to make yourself understood.

My accent has changed since I first came to the United States 25 years ago. It happened partly because as a language teacher I find myself naturally mimicking the accents of those around me. (That sometimes gets me into trouble as people think I'm taking the mickey!) Mostly though it has been a conscious choice to try to change my accent. I got thoroughly fed up of people asking me to repeat myself when I thought I was being perfectly clear. It was just faster and less frustrating to say it the American way. It also didn't hurt to sound more, rather than less, American when I was looking for employment as an English as a Second Language teacher here in the United States. My colleagues occasionally comment on my accent, and on rare occasions I  hear my students say something with an English accent (and I then 'correct' them!) One of my colleagues though has a strong accent from the south of the USA, which is just as alien to the northeast as my accent is - and I hear her students picking up her accent!

I suppose schools and universities in some countries may prefer Australian English. I can't think of any that would prefer Scottish English though ;-)

Fun with a sharp knife

Every Halloween we decorate our front step with carved pumpkins. When I say 'we', I really mean DH. I buy the pumpkins, but he's always the one that carves them. He does such a good job it has never occurred to me to help other than by helping to remove the guts from the pumpkins. I rarely even make suggestions about what the pumpkin face should look like, for fear of asking for something too difficult to execute.

Something got into me tonight though - guilt perhaps, that DH always does all the work carving the pumpkins? Or simply some enthusiasm for attacking something with a sharp knife? (It's been a long, busy, and stressful week!) DH was asking the children what kind of designs they would like on their pumpkins this year, and I decided to look for some inspiration online.  I found lots of pictures of spectacular pumpkins, but decided that for my first attempt at pumpkin carving perhaps I'd better stick to something simple.

After looking at some simpler designs though, I came to the conclusion that they were really rather boring. We have a neighbor across the street who puts out a dozen or so very nicely carved pumpkins every year, and I don't want to lower the standards in the neighborhood! Thinking I'd probably bitten off more than I could chew, I finally got started. DD gave me a felt pen, and I drew a rough outline of what I wanted. I'm really not a very artistic person, and I knew that the contours of the pumpkin were going to distort my image somewhat, so I really thought as I got started that the pumpkin was more likely to end up in the compost pile than back out on the front step.

After I got done, and went on to carve the design DD had drawn on her pumpkin, DH decided that the carving will be my job from now on. I'm thinking maybe we should have more pumpkins next year . . .

My owl

DD's spider

DH's ghost

DS's pumpkin

Top 5 Genius Ways to Improve the UK

Logical child

I let DS play some games on my iPod Touch one time when we were waiting at the doctor's office and ever since then he begs me on a regular basis to be allowed to borrow my iPod. After a playdate with a classmate, he told me that he wants Santa to bring him a Nintendo DS this year but then he started asking about their relative costs and changed his mind. Now his plan is to buy a Nintendo DS with his own money - presumably money he hopes to get as presents for birthday or Christmas, seeing as I don't give him regular pocket money. The reason why he'd rather buy one himself? Well, he found out that iPods are a lot more expensive, so he wants Santa to bring him an iPod instead! I'm very torn because the games he likes to play on the iPod are things like Numbl and Shift - games that make you think! However, given that I've already cracked the screen on my iPod, I think he's going to have to wait a while before he gets one of his own - and his thinking skills are clearly already well developed anyway, aren't they?

The geography of prejudice . . .

 . . . or the mapping of stereotypes, from visual artist, graphic designer and illustrator Yanko Tsvetkov's blog. (Go to his blog to see other maps he's created.)
.

Europe according to Britain

Europe according to the USA

Disabled access

When we were at Chessington, I saw this sign at the top of a flight of stairs. I couldn't read it at first, so went a little closer.



Hmm - is it just me, or is it unusual to have handicapped access via a flight of stairs?



Actually, one of the things I was impressed by at Chessington was that in addition to specifying the minimum height required for each ride, there was information about the degree of mobility required. Although to get on many of the rides, you clearly needed to be able to walk or at least get yourself into your seat, for others there was simply a requirement that once seated you be able to hold yourself upright unaided. It's years since I've been to a theme park in the USA, but I would hope that the ADA laws would ensure the same kind of clarity over here.

To feed or not to feed the ducks?

Blue Planet Aquarium was selling food for visitors to feed to the ducks.



But right next to the vending machine full of duck food was this sign:

Poor kitties!

The children were so stunned by these signs at the side of the road in the UK that they took pictures of them.

Disoriented

It was a strange feeling to be back in the UK after so long (over 4 years) away. It didn't exactly feel like home any more but it wasn't exactly foreign either. It was more like coming home to your own house to find that someone had redecorated and changed some of the furniture while you were away.

The holiday that nearly wasn't

Our vacation to the UK was almost over before it began. On the flight over, British Airways had assigned me a seat in a different row to DH and the children. We agreed that this was not a bad thing as I really needed to sleep because I would be the one driving when we got to the UK and would need to have my wits about me as it was so long since I 'd driven there.

Sadly, I got no sleep. The children were right behind me and VERY excited to be on a plane. The last time we flew to the UK it was via Reykjavik on IcelandAir and DS howled because he did not have the seatback TV his sister had promised him. This time they had the seatback TVs and what seemed like a gazillion choices of things to watch - not all of them appropriate for kids, but with no way to switch off the inappropriate stuff. I had told them there would be "a" kids' movie, but they had so much choice they decided to try to watch everything! So no sleeping children, lots of commenting on the movies, telling mommy to look out of the window, and a fair amount of kicking mommy's seat. Oh, and during the brief moment that DH actually got to nap, the flight attendant came by and gave my daughter coffee! Add to that, the fact that I was sitting next to two very nice, very chatty, Scottish girls who were determined to drink the plane dry (and stock up with wine bottles for their flight to Glasgow on which they knew the drinks would not be free) and I was knackered by the time we got to Heathrow.

The kids and I, with our British passports, breezed through UK immigration, but DH got stuck in a enormously long queue as several flights appeared to have arrived at the same time. He was not amused when, after half an hour, he finally got to the front of the queue to find out that he could have walked through with us! (He still has suspicions that if he had tried that, they would have sent him back to the foreigners' queue anyway!)

As we exited into the airport, we believed the signs that told us to head to the far end of Terminal 5 for car rental buses. Once we were outside the building we found we had to walk all the way back to the end of the building where we'd started. Grr.

We took the shuttle bus over to Avis car rental and it was here that things really started to go pear-shaped. I went in to deal with the paperwork, while DH stayed outside with the children. Over-tired children. Weasel children. Apparently deaf children because they listened to not a word their father said.

The staff inside the Avis office and their computer system were amazingly inefficient. It ended up taking over 45 minutes for me to get the paperwork sorted for a car that I had already booked and paid for. Admittedly, not all of the delay was their fault - the bloke in front of me spent twenty minutes going around and around with them over the fact that he wanted to pay cash for his rental and just couldn't fathom why they refused to let him leave with a car without giving them a credit card number. I don't know what planet he came from, but clearly no car rental company is going to let you leave without giving them a valid credit card number.

Fortunately, I had my receipt from British Airways because Avis claimed to have no record of the booking in their computer, and the staff member behind the desk commented that this 'always' happened with BA rentals! No record of the booking meant no record of my credit card, which meant they wanted the number again. I explained I had already paid, and although I understood that they needed to have the number on file, I did not expect them to charge my card. "Of course not", she said, and promptly asked if I would give her my card again as it "hadn't gone through" the first time!

When I've rented cars at Heathrow in the past (with another company, that my sister used to work for), they would get done with the paperwork and then tell me to go out and pick any car from a particular row. I don't think this was special treatment for a 'staff' rental. I suddenly realized when the Avis staff member disappeared for 5 minutes to go and look at the cars in the car park that this was not going to happen at Avis - she was about to assign me a specific car, so when she returned and asked if a BMW 1 series would be OK, I asked, "Is that going to have a boot big enough for all our luggage?" and "Can I have a diesel please?" (Diesel=better mpg) "I'll be right back" she said, and then disappeared off into the car park again. Why on earth did her computer system not have that information available? She returned and asked if a BMW 3 series would be OK. Suspicious that she was trying to upgrade me to a more expensive car, I said fine so long as it has a similar boot size to the Vectra, (which was the class of car I had booked), and isn't going to cost me any more money. I had no idea what a BMW 1 or BMW 3 series was, but 3 sounded more expensive than 1!

By the time I finally got the bay number for the car DH, had had it up to here with the children and demanded that the first place I drive should be Terminal 5 so he could figure out how to get a flight home again. We headed out and found the car she'd assigned us, children still being little weasels all the way. The bags fit in the boot. The kids' booster seats fit, sort of, on the back seat. I found where to put the key in, and decided to spend a minute familiarizing myself with the controls. I found the 'Start' button. Oh, no, a car designed by Microsoft - I bet the 'Start' button stops it too. (OK, it did say "Start/Stop".) But the Start button didn't seem to start the engine. With the children getting even more irritating (if that's at all possible) DH was still grumping about wanting to head for Terminal 5. I finally had to ask one of the Avis staff how to start the car. (Depress the clutch while pushing the Start button.) Fortunately, unlike Nappy Valley Mum and her husband, I had kept my ID in the car with me (American habit!) rather than in the boot , so we got out of the Avis car park OK. Well, we bunny-hopped out onto the main road - it was 4+ years since I'd had to change gear after all! Seeing as I was driving, I made the executive decision not to head for Terminal 5, but to go straight to my brother's house instead. (Actually, if only I could have persuaded DH to take the children with him, I might have dropped all 3 of them off at Terminal 5 by then!)

I breathed a sigh of relief once we got onto the empty-at-8-o'clock-on-a-Sunday-morning M25. Now the vacation would begin. Except I made the mistake once we got my brother's house of checking my email and found that Avis had charged my credit card $900 ($300 more than the cost of our rental!), not once but twice :-( Avis' slogan may be "We try harder" but in my experience all that means is "We try harder to piss you off!"

36 hour day

(Image from Matt Kursmark.)

My DH blogged over here about the 36 hour day that started our vacation in the UK. Apparently the madness of the first 36 hours worked as we all adapted relatively quickly, waking at a reasonable 7 a.m. most days.

As we left on vacation, DS was apparently unclear as to exactly where we were going and how. After we picked up the rental car to get to the airport, he looked at the cars on our driveway and asked which one we were going in! On seeing Boston he shouted in delight, "I can see New York!" He then wanted to know how we were going to get the rental car to the UK. As we got out of the car at the airport he squealed, "Look Momma, there's a plane!"

He liked the rental cars we had - a BMW 3 series in the UK, and a Cadillac on our return to the US to get back home - and compared my RAV 4 to them very unfavorably. I liked the BMW too, but given that a BMW 3 series vehicle could cost twice as much as my RAV 4, I won't be buying one any time soon.

What's wrong . . .

with this picture from my recent vacation?

Never mind the London buses . . .

. . . check out this ambulance!



I believe bikes are used in a few towns as rapid response vehicles because they can get through the traffic faster than a car.

Bugs and meds

I didn't miss the US on our recent trip to the UK, except when we needed an open pharmacy at 8 on a Sunday evening when my son had a strong allergic reaction to the local biting insects and began to look very puffy. My mother was sure the 24 hour Tescos would be open, but '24 hours' means 10 a.m. till 4 p.m. on Sundays. Should you ever be in a similar situation, do not bother trying to find out which is the 'duty chemist' in town. They won't be open either, as their hours are likely to be something like 11 a.m. till 1 p.m. According to Late Night Chemist, Boots claims that they now have a 24 hour pharmacy within a thirty mile drive of most of the UK population, but we had a hospital much closer than that which was a better bet. We were lucky enough that we knew all we needed for DS was over-the-counter antihistamines. The hospital has a truly 24 hour pharmacy which sells OTC meds, and we got in and out fast enough that we weren't even charged the 2 pound parking fee and didn't have to deal with anyone asking us for either NHS cards or (worse) credit cards!

Make sure you know the generic name for any OTC meds you may need when travelling. We wanted Claritin - and found Clarityn was the same thing - loratadine. I would be wary however that similar brand names might not always mean similar products, and sometimes the names are so different that telling the pharmacist what you want will not immediately get you what you need.

Of course, we should have had some loratadine with us. I had my asthma inhaler and never needed it, though had I forgotten it I would have certainly needed it! I was glad I'd remembered the imodium when I was not well on our return flight - especially as we ended up sitting in the plane on the ground at Heathrow for 2 hours after our scheduled departure time! Although I've had a flight attendant offer me meds for an upset stomach in the past, I learned from that experience that the imodium pills are so tiny it's always worth having some with you when you travel. Loratadine now gets added to my packing list, but who knew that bug repellent with DEET would have been a good idea for a trip to the UK? Aiee - not that it would have done anything to ward off the wasps that were everywhere this year . . .

Time warp?

We left the USA on July 31st for a 2 week vacation in the UK. We returned yesterday to find that it is apparently almost Halloween already as the supermarket had a whole aisle dedicated to Halloween candy and decorations and there was an aisle of pumpkin ales at the liquor store. Apparently we missed the whole 'back-to-school' season!