Day 13: Ring the bell and run away!

Two weeks after we moved out of our house in the UK, we are still waiting for our 'essentials' to arrive via planet-destroying airfreight. It seems remarkable to me that they apparently failed to leave the UK for a week after they left our house - so much for an "express 7-10 day service". Now they are with US customs and no-one can do anything to speed them up. Hopefully they will arrive soon, otherwise the deep-sea shipment may catch up as rumour has it that is, rather than washing up on a beach in Devon, arriving any time now in New York City.

When I was at school it was a well known game (among the naughtiest children - never me of course!) to go up to a house, ring the doorbell and run away. Here, I would guess, the children are too well-behaved, the doorbells are too far from the street and in any case grown men have taken the game on and raised it to a new level. Who are these adult-pranksters? The parcel delivery men. Yes, they put the parcel on the doorstep, ring the bell and without waiting to see if anyone will come, return to their van and drive away. Well, it seems to work OK, so who am I to complain?

Day 6: We've got mail

Today the weather has been kind, but Exiles #3 and 4 have been sick and Exile #2 and myself have been exhausted from a sleepless night. So it's been a quiet day all round. I started work in anger (anger at my ability to connect to the IT systems that is!), and we started to realise just how far we are away from feeling like we know what we are doing. Every simple everyday task seems incredibly hard. Today's tasks were attempting to register with a doctor and buy something for the girls to drink at the supermarket - maybe it's the apparent familiarity of the culture that makes the differences seem so big.

We had our first post today - the USPS man stopped me to say "Your mail's started coming buddy". I can only assume that he felt the need to tell me because he put mail in today and found that we hadn't removed yesterday's. We could be kind to ourselves as suggest that it's because of the ice-storm and not going out today because of the kids being ill, but the truth of the matter is that it's another cultural misunderstanding. In the UK, our post arrived in our hall after being delivered through a letterbox in the door. Now, being cosmopolitan people, we know that doesn't happen here - the mail-man comes and puts it in the box by the street, and the box has a little flag to indicate when there's mail in it.

Close. The box has a little flag to indicate when there's outgoing mail in it. Doh!