Introspection.

-Today, while shopping for a stack of birthday cards for all of the upcoming Dickinson HUM310 birthdays, I couldn't resist buying two cards for myself to put on my wall: one is an V&A Museum print of my absolute favorite photo of John Lennon and Paul McCartney circa 1965, which is much better quality than the computer-paper printout I previously owned. The other card is shaped like a slice of beans on toast with googly eyes, stick arms and legs, and a cartoony smile glued onto it. I had to have it. Taken together, these two cards explain my personality in a nutshell, I think.

Interestingly enough, when browsing the Clinton Cards website for pictures of these fabulous cards (to no avail), I found that they sell a monogramable silver coin bank, which is the exact same one I've owned since I was born.

-I'm trying this tea thing, which is probably a bad idea, since it's 9PM and I planned to go to bed early tonight. I'm enjoying it, but I still don't get the craze. Perhaps it's something to do with the fact that I'm drinking Earl Grey with sugar and without milk, which I think is something close to a felony in the UK. I'll buy some milk tomorrow and see if that wows me.

-I'm currently in the throes of a love affair...with a hooded sweatshirt. I was disappointed last semester that UEA's School of American Studies (the American Studies department, in American) did not have its own hoodies for students to buy much like every other school on campus, so I decided to make my own online based on other schools' templates. It is perhaps the best-fitting, most comfortable pull-over hoodie I've ever owned. I'm trying not to wear it every day, because I think people will start to realize that I've been wearing the same thing five different days this week, but it's one of the best articles of clothing ever. It gets a weekly wash, but it gets a Febreeze every few days too, since every time I decide to use the grill in the kitchen to make my dinner, all of my clothes decide to smell like the inside of a chippy, and I'd rather not smell like frying oil until the next laundry day.

-I don't know why, but while on the bus today, for some stupid reason, I had one of those "wow, I'm in England" moments. You'd think after almost six months I'd be used to the fact that I'm not in America anymore, and I think I am, but it's this subconscious thing most of the time that you tend not to think about. Even when I'm confronted by something new and English, it rarely hits me in such a way that I feel like I'm outside of America. It also strikes me as suddenly funny that I'm pretty much a permanent, indefinite resident here, an immigrant. I feel like I have some sort of ownership on England, but I still don't feel any more "English" than when I arrived. I might even feel less so.

-I've begun to drink more here in England. I don't mean to announce this with any sort of fanfare, since I realized I actually kind of liked cider last semester and had little sips and tastes of things here and there since August. I've also felt more comfortable with the attitude towards alcohol in this country all along, but I was never compelled to order any for myself last semester, partially because I didn't feel like it and partially because I thought it was weird to one day be a teetotaler and the next not be. I thought with a new year, a new semester, and a new decade, if I was going to make the jump to social drinker, I might as well do it now when 2010 is shiny and new, so I did.