Care Parcel

This was our Christmas food parcel from England. It arrived today - 27 days too late! I am sure we will still put all the lovely food to good use though! There is even a Christmas pudding and a jar of brandy butter YUM! Thanks for the lovely gesture Mum but I am looking forward to the real thing at your house next Christmas!

Frog / Crab update - No casualties! Woop.

Another Snow Day

While I am ecstatically happy to have a day lounging around at home instead of working, it comes right after a three day weekend for Martin Luther King. That means I haven't been at school for 4 days. I am very worried about the creatures who are living in my classroom. I have about 15 African dwarf frogs and 12 or so tiny crabs. This is for our 'Animal Studies' science module. We have already suffered the deaths of 3 craps - reason unknown and I don't know how 4 days without food or heat will effect them. It was very strange at first to have creatures in the classroom but I have got used to them now and would hate to turn up tomorrow morning to discover an aquatic annihilation. Plus the millipedes arrive this week.

Snowtubing.

After seeing photos of some of my lovely fellow Fulbrighters snowtubing I was desperate to give it a go. Today was a beautiful sunny day so we headed off with my wonderful 'exchange parents' to Willard Mountain, Greenwich, NY. Snow tubing entails being pulled up a hill by a ski lift type thing, sitting in a massive inflatable tyre. When you get to the top, you slide down to the bottom. No tubes are involved at all. A more accurate name would be tyre sledging! It was as fun as I had expected but very, very cold. At one point my toes were so cold I was wondering if frostbite and toe amputation would be covered on the medical insurance. The place was packed, New Yorkers are a vey 'outdoorsy' bunch. Sailing and hiking in the summer and winter sports in the snow.

I'm spending the night in a much more relaxed manner, watching The Golden Globes with a nice glass of Sauvignon Blanc.

New York Efficiency

Less than 24 hours after the car gave up the ghost, it is fixed and back safe in out garage. Yes there is a high cost but we'll worry about that another day. $600 for a new distributor as ours had motor oil in it. After googling, this is apparently a common problem with Nissan Altimas. The whole car only cost just over a grand! But it was wonderful to see Ron and the car waiting to pick me up after school today and it means we can go food shopping tomorrow at Walmart! We won't starve!! The first photo shows the main road we drive to school everyday and the second photo shows a residential street that leads to Central Park school. These photos were both taken yesterday on the way to school. The day after a huge snow storm that had closed the schools for a day. As you can see, they have been cleared by the snow ploughs and are clear and safe to drive. So there you go. Americans may be obsessed with the automobile but in certain circumstances that is not a bad thing!

Footnote: In the first photo you can also see the American flag flying at half mast, as it has been all week since the terrible shooting in Arizona.

Bad News and Good News.

The bad news is our car broke down on the way home from work tonight. Luckily one of the 3 people we could call in such a situation was in and came to rescue us. The car has been towed to the garage where it awaits an autopsy. No car is going to be a bit of a problem. We live a 30 minute drive from work and a 15 minute drive from the nearest grocery shop. No public transport obviously.

The good news is these fantastic new biker boots were delivered to me today. Grey distressed suede with silvertone buckles. They are lovely. Which leads to more good news, they are so lovely even Queen of Cool, Sian wants to wear them. Which brings us full circle to bad news. Sian wants to wear them. I'll never see them again!

Half Way

Today is officially the half way point in our stay in America. 5 and a half months done, five and a half months to go! A certain teenage girl is excited about this, as the photo illustrates. I think it has an air of the prison cell to it. Disturbing!

Snow Day

I could not believe it before Christmas when schools in the UK were closed for 'Snow Days'. In all my 35 years of being either a student, parent or teacher this has NEVER happened to me. I missed out on 3 days off and have to admit I was gutted. Since we arrived in NY State in August people have been warning us about how cold it will get and how much snow there will be. Up till today there have been 2 occasions when we possibly could have had a snow day but one was in the holidays and one was a Saturday. Today FINALLY it has happened. And it was wonderful. I was night-before-Christmas excited last night and kept waking in the night to check the weather and dreaming there was no snow. At 5 am I couldn't wait any longer and turned on YNN (Your News Now!). There it was across the bottom of the screen, Schenectady School District....CLOSED. I went straight back to sleep. Today has been spent playing in the snow with Sian, snoozing, watching Law and Order SVU, cleaning and generally being ecstatic with happiness. This cozy little condo is a lovely place to be when it is cold outside! The decision to close schools rests with the Superintendent of the school district. I can't think of an equivalent person in Hull but I am sure whoever it was would find it very difficult to make a decision like that,which would close every Primary and Secondary in Hull. In England when bad weather causes schools to close people complain like crazy. Over here it seems to be understood that schools are there to EDUCATE children not to babysit them while the parents are at work / in the pub. Why should anyone, child or teacher, put their life at risk to travel somewhere when it is not essential? Snow days are built in to the school year so no learning is missed. Such a sensible way to go on.

Fame At Last!!

Schenectady School District shot this video at the end of last year. It will be posted on the main school district homepage and also will be featured on public access tv. I think they have done an excellent job, it is a great video and will be a lovely reminder of my time here. I have had a great week this week. Nothing new or different has happened but I have had a couple of moments this week where i felt....it's difficult to explain. Normal. Relaxed. At home. None of these cover it but they all come close. I think I am finally 'settling down'. One of the problems I found when I got here was the huge expectations I had of the US. Whoever does their PR should get a big raise!! I think I am now letting go of my expectations and starting to enjoy the 'real' America.

Happy New Year

We celebrated New Year's Eve with a night in, just the 3 of us (OK I admit it, we had a big fat ZERO invitations for alternative ways to spent the evening!) Anyway we did not let that spoil the fun and tried to celebrate BOTH New Years Eve's so had one at 7pm (UK midnight) and the American one at actual midnight! Having seen the big sparkly ball being prepared in Times Square a few days before I was interested to see the drop but DISASTER! After spending an hour watching Ryan Seacrest present the NYE show, midnight came and there were shots of fireworks and people kissing but NO BALL DROP!!!! Very weird, I wonder why it wasn't televised. Happy New Year everyone. May 2011 bring you all your heart desires!

All Good Things To Those Who Wait.

Sian got mainly $$$ for Christmas and we planned to go down to NYC so she could get some clothes from Topshop which has only one branch in the whole of USA. We were due to travel down with a local coach company who were doing 'buy-one-get-one-half-price' deals. Of course you will have guessed by now that New York was hit -the night before we were due to go- with the worst snow so far this winter. The next morning the local news channel was telling everyone to stay at home if they could and that people should not try to travel on the thruway (the motorway to NYC). So i decided we should stay at home, I actually presumed the company would cancel the trip - but this was not the case. Sian was so good about it but I was devastated! This exchange experience brings fabulous opportunities but obviously not EVERY day! From Christmas day until New Years day we were very much left to our own devices and although we had a lovely Christmas together I missed all the Christmas drinks and parties we would have been enjoying with our friends and family in the UK. I really was excited about NYC as it was something fabulous that I couldn't have possibly done had we not have come to the US. Anyway after much crying and many phone calls we managed to get another trip organised (for another payment) 2 days later. The snow in New York had been cleared from the streets and by snow ploughs and deposited in HUGE piles on the pavement. This made crossing the road perilous! We had a fantastic and magical day, Sian spent a good couple of hours in Topshop, we visited Times Square and saw the Rockefeller Christmas Tree. I REALLY am a city girl and do miss living in a city so much! As a happy postscript to this blog, the travel company have offered vouchers to make up for the double payment. I bet the original trip didn't get even halfway to NY in all the snow! No trips planned till February now so I need to start saving up!