Tea and cookies

It’s a beautiful fall day here in Leeds, U.K.! We are noticing all of the details we’ve missed for the past few years; the waving trees with their watercolored leaves tumbling down, the smell of fall rain, and the crisp, starry nights. We’ve been choosing to liberate ourselves from the sidewalk to head through the piles of crunchy leaves whenever we can. Now we are getting ready to celebrate Halloween (in a very non-pagan kind of way) armed with a bag of candy corn sent to us by Micah (yay Micah!), and an orange balloon that I drew a pumpkin face on with a pen (^_^). We did carve a pair of Jack-o-lanterns for our window, but they, unfortunately, were invaded by a nasty form of mold-cancer this week and had to die a pre-Halloween death. That wasn’t before one of them burst into flame, and Ian leapt into fire-fighting action and saved our flat from certain incineration. Maybe we need to add a “flaming orange vegetable” clause to our insurance.

It’s been two months now since touchdown, and life in the land of the queen (God save her), is getting better all the time. I'm trying not to adapt these people's strange way of talking, which is hard, because Ian has a strange way of talking, too! I paused for about a half a minute the other day to remember to ask Ian to pick up some *laundry detergent* instead of *washing powder* (but I think it’s going to be awhile before I’ll want to call dish soap “washing-up liquid”). Still sticking strong to my *chips* and *fries* distinctions, but Ian has managed to get me to take one step toward further Britification in that he has figured out that I will drink tea semi-daily with him if he gives me a cookie with it. I think I still have a long way to go though, because I only manage to drink as much tea as I need to get through my cookie before abandoning the rest of it! I do think the tea after tea* thing is starting to grow on me, though! (*in British, tea = dinner. So confusing!)

Peace, love, tea, and biscuits,
Kristy