Positivity Day

It's difficult to believe that it's the 7th of April again already. It doesn't seem anywhere near that long since I wrote that entry, or any of the entries in that month for that matter, but it means that I've now been living in America for nearly two years. And in that time I've still got used to virtually none of it. (The immigration papers for my removal of conditions have been sent off, by the way - we just have to wait for a reply.)

Living in Britain, we're taught from birth to sort of look down on Americans and their country for being loud and improper and making fun of our teeth, and I find it a complete comedy of fate that I ended up living there. But today I've been told that as it's the country's birthday I have to concentrate on the positive things that I've found in the last couple of years in Boston compared to my previously known life in Scotland. And after some not inconsiderable mental effort, I came up with some.

• Cheaper in general
• Though it doesn't directly affect me, extremely cheap petrol in particular (yes)
• And I got a job in about a minute and a half, after all
• Better public transport
• Further away from France
• And Whitney's aunt's flat
• Sushi (admittedly from Japan)
• Chow foon (admittedly from China)
• Better Internet service
• Jimmy Carr is not on television
• Pizza delivery
• Baby carrots
• Decent chance of finding large stores closer than 15 miles away
• Public toilets that are not utterly apocalyptic
• Chavs have not yet been invented
• Watermelon
• Mythbusters
• Waffles (batter type)
• Actually, burritos are quite nice too

You'll probably notice that most of these are food-related, and while I am not particularly snobbish or picky about food (in fact, like all Scottish people I don't much care what bits of an animal I eat as long as they've been deep fried enough) it's one of the biggest things you notice when you move to a new country. As you'll have experienced if you've ever been to LiDL, everything is like a strange parallel universe where you think you recognize things but they have different names and don't taste quite how you remember them. But I'm having to realize that there are some things that you can get in America that are nowhere to be seen in Britain, even though I'm stranded without a significant amount of things common in Britain that America misses out on.

Although on one of our first trips to the local supermarket I was absolutely horrified to find cheese in a spray can. For pity's sake.