Adjusting and School Adventures

I have an issue of falling asleep during any car ride that I have experienced with my uncle. I have spent the entire trip either yawning or sleeping it seems. My uncle has laughed at me a few times because I spend so much time yawning or complaining that I am sleeping. I suppose thats what I get for going to another country that is a completely different time zone as well as choosing to live with people that are night owls. If I want to call home I usually have to wait till 10:30pm my time if not later. And then I stay up late talking to my aunt and uncle. And then I get up at 8am so I can walk my elder cousin to school at quarter to 9am.


We eat dinner 2 to 3 hours later then I am used to, but we have tea around 5 so its not too bad. When I am caving I skip lunch altogether and only eat a granola bar until we are out of the caves. I eat a lot at tea those days.


I had one of those very tired, but I stayed up too late anyways, nights last night because my uncle and I got back around 6ish last night. We (my aunt, uncle, and I) started watching a movie at half past 9. I really liked it. I had never heard of the movie, A Fish Named Wanda, but it has Kevin Kline, John Cleese and Jamie Lee Curtis as well as some other people. It was hilarious. Then we stayed talking for a while, and then I wanted to finish checking my emails from being gone all weekend.


By the way, sorry for the occasional typos. I usually forget to give these posts a once over and the times that I do remember I catch a load of issues. Oops. This is why its a blog post and not a scholarly journal.


I had a lazy morning today to catch up on sleep and reading. The weather was really nice, sunny and only kinda really windy instead of really windy like usual. Of course, as this was a lazy morning I was not inclined to go outside, but I have a lovely view from my “room”, also known as the study.


I went to my younger cousin's school this afternoon and it was show and tell. Instead of my cousin doing all of the showing and telling, it was up to me to answer all of the millions of questions asked of me by a bunch of Year 4's. One boy kept asking question after question. His hand was up for the whole hour that I answered questions. The questions he asked were varied and covered topics like the weather, to whether I liked Obama, to what was the most deadly animal in the US.


The kids had a hard time grasping how big the US is and what that means in terms of culture, traveling, and seasons. When I said that we did not really have any poisonous animals in Minnesota, the boy exclaimed “But all of my American books say that snakes are the deadliest and most poisonous animals in America!”. It was difficult explaining to him that the part of the country that I live in is very different from another part. Here in the UK the weather and appearance is quite similar, and even the culture is not too different. Obviously there are differences, but the UK is 4 separate countries so that is understandable, but the differences are minor.


The teacher attempted to explain that a farm in Texas is as large as Wales, and that that farm is a small part of Texas, and Texas is only a small part of the US. The students looked a bit lost and confused, as they could not imagine anything that large. I never really thought about how small some countries are in comparison. I can imagine that the children never thought that their country was small either.


The Q&A was fun, and I am glad that I got to meet some of the kids because I will be going on a field trip with them tomorrow.