Adjusting, sort of.

I am slowly but surely adjusting to life here in the US. But things still tend to throw me such as the pronunciation of certain words. I can never remember them when I go to write this but one that came up recently was when navigating a route (as in root) to a certain location, here they say 'rowt' so my son in law was not too sure with what I was saying to start with. But give him his due, he is getting used to me and has heard similar words from his wife (my daughter).

I have also found that when driving and approaching traffic lights, my eyes tend to drift towards where I would expect the lights to be, i.e. on a pole at the side of the road on my side of the junction. Here of course they are usually on wires or an extended pole above the lane itself and across on the other side of the junction (so they are further away than in Oz or the UK). Several times I have caught myself just in time as I suddenly noticed the red light. It is a very minor adjustment of where to look but I guess some forty odd years of driving makes in the UK and Australia makes it rather hard to adapt.

I noticed another little thing today. Cement trucks. In the UK and Australia the drum is raised above the driver and slopes down towards the back. I am so used to this arrangement I have been amazed to see that the Americans do it the other way round, i.e. the drum is raised at the back and slopes down towards the cab. Only a little thing but it caught my eye as it looks weird to me.

Whilst still working hard at job hunting, I have also started to look at housing. I have become very aware of the fact that brick houses, whilst not exactly uncommon, are not really common either. Houses can have a wood exterior although many have either a PVC or aluminum siding, or rather to use the American version, ‘aloominum siding. They are not as big as I expected (yes some are but the average size seems smaller than I anticipated).

I also discovered that you can have peanut butter on or in just about anything. I have previously mentioned peanut butter ice cream, today I discovered peanut butter filled doughnuts! It was peanut butter whipped with cream. I had a Lactaid and tried one. It was nice but kind of strange and very rich (why am I not surprised).

My learning journey just keeps on going!