A Tasty Recipe

We tried something new for dinner tonight and it turned out quite well. It's funny because when we first arrived here we had trouble finding things we liked to eat. After a month or so, we had finally found a few meals we enjoyed...after six months here, we're tired of eating the same thing each week :)

So I bought a couple British recipe magazines and we're trying out some new dishes. Tonight was chicken with spinach and pea risotto. The recipe is pretty simple and it's fairly quick to prepare. I do apologize though because recipes here are crazy! Instead of measuring in volume (cups), everything is measured by weight. Luckily the exact measurements don't matter too much. Here's the recipe...


600 grams chicken stock
150 grams arborio rice
100 grams frozen peas (we used soya beans)
110 grams young leaf spinach (we used frozen)
4 skinless chicken breasts

Warm the chicken stock, and then add rice slowly, stirring between each addition so the rice absorbs the liquid. Then stir in the frozen peas. Season 4 chicken breasts and grill for 10 minutes on each side. Stir spinach into the rice and once it has wilted, serve the risotto with the chicken. (We also seasoned the risotto with salt, garlic and Italian seasoning as it was cooking).

Mothers on the Bus

A controversial topic in this country is the government's support of teenage mothers. Many view the system as rewarding women for becoming pregnant. It is quite interesting because women qualify for no benefits if they marry, however if they remain single they receive a council house (government paid housing) and they qualify for more spacious housing with each child they have. They also receive monthly stipends to cover food and other expenses, with no expectation for them to ever work…that is until their children reach a certain age and they are then given less benefits. From what I've been told this rule results in women just continuing to have children in order to avoid working.

I see these "benefit mothers" with their numerous children on the bus each morning. They seem to be a perfect example of how NOT to raise a child. For example, this morning I saw a mother feeding her daughter salt & vinegar chips and having her drink Lilt (similar to Mountain Dew) through a straw. It's sad to see any child having a breakfast like that, but it was even worse in this case because the child was only 2 or 3 years old. Another example were two little boys who appeared to be about five years old, discussing the movie Kill Bill which they had watched the night before. What parent lets their kids watch Kill Bill??

Shopping

It can be really hard to buy things here. Yesterday, Chris commented that he felt like we were in Russia as we looked for knives because there was one and only one choice. Granted the store we were shopping at was more similar to Home Depot than Bed, Bath and Beyond, but it's like that most everywhere here. Another frustrating thing is how many stores close on Sundays. I can never remember for certain which stores are open on the High Street (like Main Street) near us, so I went today and was disappointed to find that only one of three stores I was hoping to go to were open.

We end up purchasing quite a bit from Amazon.co.uk to avoid the hassle of trying to shop at stores here. Our most recent purchase is a 250GB external hard drive. I ordered it as soon as I realized our laptop hard drive was so full that I could no longer burn DVDs. Our new hard drive will now hold our 9,700 photos and 6,400 songs. It's the first UK product we've bought which will be coming back to the U.S. with us, which means we'll need to purchase a US outlet adapter before we come back.

Shrove Tuesday

Today is Shrove Tuesday, also known as Pancake Day, here in England. Of course, in the U.S. it is Mardi Gras that is celebrated on the day before Lent. We've learned that when the British say pancakes they actually mean crepes. They refer to our type of pancakes as American pancakes, which are not at all popular here. They would never have maple syrup on either type of pancake, although they do sell it here...next to the ice cream toppings.

There was lots of talk today at work about everyone having pancakes tonight (as dessert). Two women even bought new crepe pans for the occasion. Discussion of favorite toppings came up and the unanimous decision was lemon and sugar. There was even a Pancake Party tonight for students and staff at the college where I work.

This website has some interesting information on Shrove Tuesday...
http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/shrove.html

Apparently, Pancake Day is also celebrated in the U.S. (at IHOP at least)...
http://ihop.com/tellafriend.php

Multilingual People

I am amazed by people who fluently speak multiple languages. I thought about this yesterday at work when helping two students from Belgium and Poland who spoke flawless English. I know that foreign language is taught earlier in schools in Europe, but even so I still think it's a remarkable skill. I'm reminded of our cab driver in Zurich who seamlessly switched between speaking English, Swiss German and French. In addition to those three languages, the flight attendants on Swiss Air also speak Italian. From talking with people here it seems as though England is more similar to the U.S., in that students take one foreign language beginning in secondary school and rarely reach the level of fluency.

We had coffee with Chris' Italian labmate Dario and his Mom today. Dario's Mom speaks Italian, French, German, Arabic and English (Arabic because she was born in Egypt). His Dad speaks Italian, French and German but not English, so it should be interesting trying to communicate with him when we stay at Dario's house in April. His Mom was so nice and is really looking forward to our visit. She shared a story with us of meeting a friend when she was 9 years old vacationing in Italy (she lived in Egypt at the time) and her friend was from Germany. They became pen pals (writing in German) and are still friends to this day. She's very happy that Dario is making "international friends" and I'm really happy that we're getting the chance to learn so much about other cultures.

Common Names

I find the names that are very common here to be interesting...more so for female names than male names. Probably because the popular males names tend to be the same as in the U.S. (Andy, Mike, Chris), but the female names are a bit different. The names Emma, Claire/Clare, Helen, Nicola, and Gemma/Jemma are incredibly popular here. There's also not a great variety in last names, so there end up being quite a few Nicola Adams, Helen Jones and Claire Edwards for example. I come across this everyday at work when researching information on students. Many times so many students share the same names that the only way to differentiate them is by their birthdates (middle names are less common here).

Perhaps one of the reasons I find this so fascinating is because my name is so unique. I've personally met only two other women named Karis. I worked at Famous Footwear with one, which was really weird because she not only shared my same name, but she was born one day before me. The name Karis is more popular here, although often spelled Charis, which I'm certainly glad is not the spelling of my name, as people already get me and Chris' names confused.

When talking about names for our kids, we've decided that we don't want to name our children anything that's too common, to avoid having them differentiated by a last initial...but also nothing too strange, because I can tell you it's a pain to have to constantly spell your first and last name. As you all know, switching from my maiden to married name didn't help with this either :) Of course, you never know what names will become common. I like the Social Security baby name website http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/ which tells you the most popular names for each year, that way you can ensure you're not giving your child a newly popular name.

Missing Madison

Days like today are one the few days that I don't miss Madison. When I brought up my Google homepage just now, it informed me that it's minus 11 degrees in Madison right now and 50 degrees in Birmingham (at 10:00am and 4:00pm respectively).

Not only is it fairly warm here, but it's also not raining! Yesterday, there was not a cloud in the sky, so we took advantage of the fantastic weather and walked downtown via the canal, which is something we haven't done in a long time (since October I think).

We go back and forth as to where we'd like to live after we leave England. Chris says he'd accept a job from UW in a heartbeat because he really liked living in Madison. However, yesterday we were kicking around the idea of the Oregon/Washington area, which has weather similar to here in the sense of rain and mild temperatures. I guess we won't know anything for certain until late '08/early '09, but it is fun to talk about where we might settle back in the U.S.

Bus Stop Etiquette

There's an inane unwritten rule here that the first person who arrives at the bus stop is the first person to get on the bus, which also gives that person the responsibility of flagging down the bus. I suppose the idea behind this is fine in theory, but it becomes complicated in reality because you don't know which bus each person is waiting for. The routine I see play out each morning at my bus stop is extremely comical.

In my mind, it's very easy to tell when a bus is approaching that someone is waiting for because they start moving toward the front of the bus stop (the spot where you flag the bus down). So if no one is moving, it's a very safe assumption that no one else is waiting for that bus and therefore you need to flag the bus down yourself. However, it seems that some people are so nervous about going first and potentially offending that they will wait until the very last minute to move, and by then the bus has passed by. I know they've missed their bus, because they then get on the same number bus that next arrives. It's so crazy that they'll take the chance of missing their bus!!

There are probably times that I've cut ahead of someone unitentionally, but I'm certainly not ever going to miss my bus because someone doesn't move when they see their bus coming. I know it's my bus and I'm getting on it :) Riding the bus is definitely an adventure. There always seems to be a faint smell of urine and I've had some of the strangest people sit down next to me and strike up a conversation. However, it's definitely worth it to not deal with the hassles and cost of owning a car here!

We'll be renting our first car here in March for Chris' parents visit and I'm anxious to see how it goes because neither of us has ever driven here (only Chris and his Dad will attempt to...I'm not brave enough yet, especially because it will be a manual tranmission car). We have quite an ambitious itinerary. We'll be gone six days and we plan to drive through South-West England (Stonehenge, Bath, Cheddar), then north through Wales, and finally spend 3 days in Scotland near Edinburgh.