Renaissance Faire & Hartford Pride

The weekend before last we got tickets for the Renaissance Faire in Lebanon on Groupon.

There were birds of prey and different animals about.

They also had jousting but the weather that day was terrible so they had to stop early because it was too wet for the horses.

I don’t know what I was expecting but the Americans went hard on the theming, Kim and I didn’t dress up and we were in the minority. Everyone kept putting on dodgy English accents too but no one could pronounce the place names they were supposedly from. I distinctly heard someone pronounce Norwich as ‘nor-wich’.

Kim got a ticket from the Sheriff.

And we went to a witch burning, but in the end the wet weather won out and we gave up.

The next day was Labor Day and Kim was working but I decided to do a little labour of my own and got round to some weeding in the garden.

I guess it would have looked more impressive with a before and after shot… never mind.

In other news, we saw some more wildlife this week. A lovely looking raccoon in our neighbours garden out in the day. Kim said this meant it had rabies but I googled it and that’s just an old wives tale. We also got brought a thoughtful gift from Barclay cat in the form of a northern short tailed shrew on our porch. I’ve never seen a shrew before but it was OK, just a bit shell shocked so I picked it up with some gardening gloves (apparently they’re venomous?) and put it in a box to have a rest before I let it out again in the forest by our house.

We bought a new bench to go in our upstairs bedroom which Bunny the cat has adopted as her own.

This weekend we went to Stop & Shop, a different grocery store and we discovered the British Aisle (as opposed to the British Isle?). Finally I can get marmite, squash, lemon curd etc.

They also sell candles with the pope on them, so… there’s that.

And slanderous magazines. I remember Kim had a magazine once that said it contained the Duchess of York’s baby scan photos… as if?! I honestly don’t know how they get away with the silly things they say unless it’s just that royal family doesn’t care and ignores them.

We got a lot of autumnal themed things and Kim planted the chrysanthemums.

This weekend we went to Pride in Hartford. It wasn’t a march but more of an event and they had stalls you could look round and a ton of free pens and stickers and tote bags etc. There was a stage with different acts, I wasn’t sold on the acts so I chose this view behind the massive red afro.

It was OK but I prefer a march I think.

Afterwards we went to Bushnell Park for a little walk.

Sunday we went to IKEA and spent about $2,000 on a ton of furniture for the house but on the plus side now Barclay can sit at the new table with us.

Farmington River Tubing & Hibachi

A couple days ago on Kim’s day off we decided it was nice enough weather to try out tubing on the Farmington river. It was an hours drive away and about half an hour into the drive there was a storm (that wasn’t on our weather apps!) with thunder and lightening so we were hoping it’d be finished by the time we got there and luckily it was but when we got to the car park someone had had a bit of bad luck. There were news crews there already to view it but no one was hurt.

The tubing place went down the Farmington river on a stretch called Satan’s Kingdom State Recreation Area, we paid $20 to hire a life jacket and a heavy duty inflatable ring and off we went. It was collllllddddd but it was such a hot humid day even after the storm that it was nice.

Of course I couldn’t take my phone down with me so I couldn’t take any photos but here’s one from their website. It takes about two to three hours to float down and there are three sets of rapids you go down. “Is it safe?” my mum asked on the phone when I described it to her. Not exactly no… you have to sign waivers before you can even pay and it’s just going down a regular natural river with rocks and drift wood and animals etc, the rapids are full of rocks and if your wife is holding onto your ring and steers you directly into a rock (mentioning no names… Kimberly) then you will fall off. But it was still really fun, I’d go again. At the bottom of the river it’s very shallow you can just wade over to the pick up point and you get on an old converted school bus that drives you back to where you parked you car. I loved all the wildlife, different beautiful birds flew across our path taking no notice of us, there were ducks and we saw two otters – I’ve never seen an otter in the wild in all my life so that was special. I think because the rings you float in just take you down the river slowly there’s not too much splashing or ‘human activity’ to scare off the animals.

After tubing we drove to Kim’s parents house to see them and they took us out to dinner at a Japanese Hibachi restaurant called Sakura Garden. Hibachi is where they make the meal in front of you with some tricks. We started out by picking what we wanted then it all came in small courses. We all had some miso soup and then a salad with a nice dressing.

Then our chef arrived, a Japanese guy in a cowboy hat, very enthusiastic squirting sake in everyone’s mouth (or juice for one kid), at another table we saw him go to after there was a pregnant lady and he said no problem and whipped out a baby’s bottle which was funny. This was the volcano he made out of chopped onions.

It was really fun though, I got some nice tuna (you can see it cooking on his grill) Kim hates tuna and the kitties don’t like to share theirs if I open a can for them so I don’t get it often. Kim was stuffed after her meal, she ordered noodles and thought they came instead of the egg fried rice but she got given both alongside chicken and prawns (or shrimp as they call them here).

This waiter had games he liked to play with the sake and was steering this guy into the girl. All in all it was a fun day of new things.

Settling In To Coventry

My first week in the USA has come and gone and I’ve been settling in nicely. It’s alternated between boiling hot and rainy so that’s made it pretty humid. Kim bought us a house at Coventry by the lake and we’re lucky because there are no main roads near by so the cats are safe roaming about. Also there are no pavements – now you might think this is a bad thing but in the winter by law you have to shovel your driveway and pavements (or sidewalks) within a certain time so we get out of doing that.

The houses are all different looking compared to the UK where usually the houses are built in clusters so they tend to match their neighbours and there isn’t a lot of brick like in the UK, it’s mostly vinyl siding. We’re 3 minutes walk from Coventry Lake and you can see it from the end of our garden (or yard).

The area is really green and there’s small bits of forest either side of our little neighbourhood. As a teenager I used to have a job at a tropical garden center in Norfolk which I absolutely loved (actually I think if the pay was better I’d still be working there!), a lot of the plants that are popular here I recognise from the garden center. There are lots of hostas and we have some of these already in our garden.

There are also orange day lilies absolutely everywhere (also in our garden)

Kim’s working as usual and I’m waiting to take an awful exam which I do not feel confident about at all and am pretty sure I’ll need to retake but until then I’m without a job and not searching until I know if I’ve passed or failed so I’ve been watching a LOT of TV which I don’t usually do. In fact my friends in England liked to make fun of me because for the last few years in England I didn’t actually bother having a TV. Kim is addicted to terrible TV shows so we had to have one here but luckily she owns a smart TV and we got the Amazon Fire TV with Alexa and it works great. People in the USA pay a lot for their cable TV (think $200+ a month) which I wasn’t happy about so instead we’ve set up Hulu and Netflix and it costs a fraction of the price. There’s also some live TV apps which work great and I can connect the TV to my laptop so we’re saving a lot of money that way, also I get to annoy Alexa.

So I haven’t been too bored whilst Kim works, also when it’s nice out I’ve enjoyed walking around the neighbourhood and seeing all the wildlife. The other day I almost walked into this lovely deer in sight of our driveway then to my horror realised my iPhone had decided to turn itself off when I went to take a photo of her. Luckily she was very polite and waited for my iPhone to restart itself so I could take my photo then tripped prettily off into the woods.

I also saw a groundhog on the neighbours lawn the first morning I was here. We have a bird feeder that’s attracted a lot of blue jays, sparrows and cardinals – I think it would attract more if it wasn’t for our resident squirrels who are very sweet but figured out how to open the bird feeder faster than I did then they proceed to dump all the bird seed and meal worms out onto the floor so they can sort through to get their favourite bits. So we need to invest in a squirrel proof bird feeder which we haven’t got round to yet.

In the mean time we have a lot of our own wildlife though, the house has a lot of little cubbyholes and viewing points that the cats love.

I got my social security number through in the mail which is the equivalent to the national insurance number in the UK. I got treated to a trip to the DMV (like the DVLA) where there was a very long wait but I got told I can use my international drivers permit for a year which is great as I’ll have to retake my driving test and I don’t really want to just yet!

I did buy a little car with the money I’d saved up from my job in England, most people seem to buy their cars on finance here but as I don’t exist on credit reports here and I’m not working yet that wouldn’t be an option so I needed to look for something outright. This was made all the more difficult as the Americans favour very large cars, very very large! And I just wanted a small European car, so I found a few I liked online and settled on a little red Fiat 500 2012 which I bought from a dodgy car dealer guy from Kosovo who did not stop talking. Still, I like it and it drives great. I had to buy it in Kim’s name because I have no Connecticut state ID or drivers licence or insurance. Although, strangely Kim added the car to her insurance and her insurance went down. That would never happen in England, you might expect a discount for a multi car policy but she’s actually paying less insurance now with my car added to her policy than she was for her own which I think is mad. To continue the theme of Goldie my previous car we’ve called this one Ruby.  I had to get a satnav (GPS) though or else I won’t know where anything is! Funnily enough my sister Bronte leases a Fiat 500 in blue so we are car sisters, much like in life her model is younger and better looking than mine haha. Fuel is ridiculously cheap compared to England, to fill up my car with petrol from almost empty cost $23, which is about £17.60 which wouldn’t even give me half a tank in England!

Our neighbours have been very friendly so far, there are a few differences though, everyone here is completely obsessed with the American flag and have it plastered all over their gardens, houses, cars etc. It’s actually illegal to burn a flag here, which is fair enough I suppose but if you’ve gone to the trouble of buying a flag to burn surely you’re just burning your own flag that you’ve bought which is your own problem isn’t it? The previous owners of our house left an American flag on our shed (see the middle photo) which so far I’ve kept up there because it makes me laugh.

Another difference is that no one has a letterbox fixed into their front doors, they have mailboxes. Ours is across the street (outside our neighbour Darlene’s house, Darlene is very friendly and enjoys walking about in her nightdress and going on the trampoline with kittens… yes really) and you collect your mail from it, if you want to post a letter you don’t need to find a mailbox, you just stick your letter in the mailbox and put the little flag up and the mail carrier picks it up for you – which I think is very convenient. The United States Postal Service has proved to be every bit as incompetent as Royal Mail though when it managed to deliver 2 of the new address postcards we sent out back to ourselves… great. But I do like the mailboxes and lots of people decorate them. We got a decal sticker with our last name on it which I put on the box a bit wonky but I think the effort is still there. This is also a frequent occurrence in people’s front gardens… I just find it weird though.

So all in all it’s gone fine. Everything is still a bit of a novelty like going to the grocery store. Kim’s been helpful as always to me adjusting by pointing out little tips (“That’s margarine, it’s like butter”… err yeah… thanks for that).

We usually try and do something on Kim’s days off, we went blueberry picking the other day which was fun. Blueberries are widely grown in New England so that was tasty.

But when it’s hot we try not to over do it.

Kim’s Auntie Debbie came to visit us out in the boonies (Auntie Debbie taught me that word, it’s what UK people would say is ‘out in the sticks’, it’s USA war slang for boondocks from when they fought the Philippines) and bought us a nice ice cream cake. I haven’t tried ice cream cake before so that was exciting (as all cake is). All in all a good start.

Center Parcs With My Family 2

As I mentioned in my last post my family and I went to Center Parcs last week. The second day we tried out some miniature golf which as always I lost, I was doing so good until… I wasn’t. Mum and Bronte were getting very competitive but Charles won I think. I get to the point where I’m doing so badly that I just lose the will and start scuttling the ball about one handed like polo minus the horse. It pretty much ends up with the same number of shots as if I played seriously so why not?

We ate out a couple of times whilst we were there and all the restaurants were nice, some were just normal chains you’d find anywhere but some weren’t.

We found a little rabbit on the beach but the poor thing was blind so we think it had myxomatosis which is sad so we got one of the wildlife rangers, hopefully they put the poor thing out of it’s misery or else they starve to death.

We took some bird seed to the ducks a couple of times.

There were still quite a few ducklings about, the ducks didn’t really look after the ducklings very well because they were winding in between our legs quite happily without their parents even seeming interested.

That night we lit our fire to toast some marshmallows, the lady at the shop thought we were mad for buying a fire log in June but I don’t think the marshmallows would have melted so well on a BBQ.

I took this sachet I had called mystical fire and put that on top and it turned all the flames different colours, then we started piling other stuff on there (mainly my brother) to burn and using the marshmallow sticks to poke it which after all is the purpose of any fire. To poke.

Center Parcs With My Family

So the time to my departure from these British Isles is growing ever closer. My mum said that she would come and visit me in Great Yarmouth before I left which as I told her would have been a good idea only I have barely any furniture left and its rapidly diminishing as I try to sell all my things. So then we decided we’d go to a spa hotel… then my mum suggested the spa at Center Parcs… then we decided to take my brother and sister but ditch the spa idea because it was pricey. And thus we ended up at Center Parcs in Woburn as it was pretty much half way between Norfolk and Wiltshire where my family lives.

It’s only 3 years old so everything looked quite modern, here was our villa.

This was the gaming table where I cheated at monopoly and Charles cheated at trivial pursuit because he remembered all the answers.

My sister Bronte and I shared the twin room, I fought her and won the bed nearest the window. They were comfy but I kept sleeping with my mouth open, which I don’t usually do, and waking up with a sore throat.

We had a little patio area and BBQ.

And a little kitchen which Bronte was mainly in charge of.

My mum got the double bed and Charles gallantly volunteered to sleep on the sofa.

We mainly used the outside areas for feeding sessions with our villa babies, this is Pete.

And these are our squirrels who expected breakfast every morning, luckily I brought along two big bags of bird feed.

Angles Way Bank Holiday

Hey readers, so I had two days off from work together at the bank holiday (shocker) and decided I’d embrace the daylight and venture out for a walk just down the road from my house in Cobholm.

Early morning along Angle’s Way… it was gorgeous.

It was pretty early morning so hardly anyone was out, no dog walkers but lots and lots of wildlife. Kim’s nemesis: swans. And also a couple herons.

It was my favourite weather of all time – grey. Yes this is actually my favourite weather. Grey is perfect, it’s not too hot or cold or wet or windy… just grey. The perfect weather for any activity one might want to partake in. Sadly on the way home my lovely grey was usurped by bright sunshine leaving me with a slightly red neck (good preparation for going to live with the Americans?).

There were zillions of butterflies out, these are just the slow ones I could take photos of.

Also I saw a golden snail… I like to think he won some sort of race.

I’m really going to miss living right next door to the broads but Kimmy just completed on our first house (finally!) so I’ll be swapping the broads and the sea for a lake in just 36 days.