The Last Teabag
Posted by Gavin Bowman on Thursday, August 11, 2005 at 5:50 AM
Well, that's it for my Californian adventure. I'm down to the last of the teabags I brought along from home (it seems that everything Americans have heard about the English and their tea is true), I've done the last of my shopping, and I'm all set to fly back to the UK in the morning. An afternoon at Huntington Beach yesterday with my wife and brother-in-law proved to be a fitting way to spend our last non-packing day.
Aside from no-brainers like the weather and the beaches, there are a lot of things I'm going to miss about LA. In no particular order:-
- Glorious American junk food. I know it's wrong, but without Krispy Kreme donuts, Auntie Anne's soft jalapeno pretzels, and Pink's hotdogs, the junk food landscape back home looks very bleak indeed.
- Late openings. I love that you can do almost anything you want at any time you want in LA. The UK generally closes down by 6pm, which tends to put a real dampener on any evening plans you might try to make.
- My second family and new friends. Everyone here has been great, I hope we can repay some of the favours we've put on our tab when they get around to visiting us in the UK. And I think I'm going to miss people getting a kick out of my accent.
As I said above, no matter what impression I might give, there are definitely some things I'm looking forward to back home.
- Seeing my family. It feels like it's been a long time, so I'm really looking forward to catching up.
- Match of the Day. I can't wait to settle down with a big cup of tea and get a healthy dose of English football.
- Seeing our home. The rumours from home last week have been confirmed: I've been reliably informed that work on rebuilding our house has finally begun and I can't wait to see how it's coming along. The rumour of my brother moving in also turned out to be true, so I'm looking forward to seeing him happily back where he belongs.
- Getting back to work. I think I've done a pretty good job of keeping things moving while I've been here, and managed to avoid a lot of temptations, but as I explained a few posts ago, this impending move has completely killed my flow.
So that's that, the next time I write I'll be eight hours ahead and 16-hour flight lagged. Until then...
2 Comments:
So how did you end up in LA anyway? What's the story?
dil.b.ert
That story can be as long as short as I try to make, but the underlying reason is because it's where my wife is from.
When we lost the house in the flood, we realised that it wasn't really going to matter too much where we lived for the rest of the year, and that it didn't really matter whether we lived with my parents here, or Bea's in LA. We hadn't been over for a couple of years, so we turned not having a home into a great opportunity to spend a few months there. It worked out great, it was much less disruptive than it would be in a normal year, Bea got to spend a lot of time with her family (so I feel less guilty and she feels less homesick), and it gave us both a much needed break.
It also eased the load on my parents, who also had my brother living with them; his house was a couple of doors away from ours. We could have rented, the insurance company would have helped out with that, and if we had known back in January that we'd be out for practically the whole year we might have given it more thought, but both sets of parents have been very welcoming, and we've been made to feel very comfortable.
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