Americans

I came across a couple interesting things recently regarding Americans. The first is a blog and here's how it is described..."I've travelled around several inner London Boroughs with an English friend. She approached people, and asked them--whats the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of Americans? We then get their permission to take their picture and record what they say. These images and words make up the headings of the different posts here."

It's interesting to scroll through and see what words come to mind when describing Americans (it starts with the 31 May 2007 posting) - http://londoneyesamerica.blogspot.com/.

Something else I came across is a chart representing obesity and of course, America is #1 on the chart, but I found it fascinating to see who has simliar dietary habits to Americans.

Living Like Americans

We recently renewed our lease for another year, and we decided that we'd make our flat a bit more comfortable for the 2 additional years (maybe even more?) that we'll be here. So we purchased an additional small fridge, a condenser dryer, a microwave and vacuum. We've had our dryer just over 24 hours and I can't imagine ever going back to drying racks. It's so nice to be able to walk into our spare room and not have to navigate a maze of five drying racks. Not to mention having soft towels once again!

We weren't sure what a condenser dryer would be like, but it's not really any different then the vented dryers we're accustomed to. The only difference is that water needs to be removed from the machine after each cycle, which is easy to do. Below is a picture of the container the water collects in.



We purchased an additional fridge because things were constantly falling out of our tiny dorm size fridge. The fridge we have is a very common size here, in fact when I told my co-workers we were getting an additional fridge they were surprised that we'd need one with only two people. However, I think they are forgetting that one of us is an eating champion :) Below is a picture of our old fridge.


and then a picture of our new fridge...stocked with necessities like condiments and soda :) Chris had given up soda for awhile and was just drinking tea and coffee, but now he's back to drinking a 2 liter or so everyday.