Work, Wine and Dinner Parties

I'm finally feeling better and work is still going really well! For the first time at work today, I got asked if I was American. It struck me as odd actually that I don't get asked this more frequently because it seems that Brits are always anxious to differentiate between Americans and Canadians. Anyway, I was helping a student today when he asked me and his reply was "very nice!" Perhaps he has a thing for American women :) It reminded me of a time in Egypt when we were sleepily waiting for our 3:30am convoy ride, and overheard two people talking in what sounded like British accents. Chris asked them if they were British and where they were from. We were shocked to hear, "Yes, we're from Birmingham." They live in a village just a few miles away from us!

How old do I look? I'd occasionally get carded at home, but that seemed reasonable considering I was only a few years older than the legal drinking age, but yesterday I got carded buying wine at the grocery store and the drinking age here is 18!! Luckily, we're waiting a few years to have kids otherwise I might get disapproving looks from people thinking I was a teenage mother.

I was buying wine because we're having a guest for dinner tomorrow night. My friend Becky who I met while temping is coming over to hear about our adventures in Egypt and tell me the tales of her latest temping gig. Our unofficial New Year's resolution is to invite people over more often because we now feel settled here and Chris enjoys cooking, so it makes sense to start hosting dinner parties. Our next party is what has been deemed the "foreigner party" because no British guests were invited, instead our guests come from France, Iraq, Japan, Italy and Canada. It's a group of people that Chris and I really enjoy socializing with (they all work in his lab). I think it's because we can all relate to being foreign here. We're not leaving out the Brits though :) Two weeks after that party, we're having two British couples over (the women work in Chris' lab).

We just found out that Chris' parents will be visiting us from March 8-20, which we're very excited about! I submitted a request for 5 days off during that time, which is in addition to 4 days that I had already requested off for our trip to Italy in April. I absolutely love the number of vacation days workers get here. At home, my vacation time would be almost entirely used up by requesting 9 days off (I got 11 days total at Famous Footwear). However, here I still have 15 more vacation days, in addition to 8 paid holidays and the entire time from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day off.