Wednesday 27th August 2008

I don’t really notice the crickets anymore, which is nice. Doesn’t stop me from waking early today though. As it’s not even six o’clock and I’m wide-awake I decide I’ll get up so as not to disturb Mrs G.

I enter stealth mode and enter the bathroom. Upon leaving the bathroom I am greeted by a ghostly apparition which glowers malevolently at me like something out of a horror film. Realising that I have failed miserably in my quest to not disturb Mrs G I quickly (and quietly) slink out of the room before any violence ensues.

I spend some time reading while lying as still as possible on the sofa until it gets to safe o’clock and I take Mrs G a cup of tea.

Today’s lunch has been provided by Nica’s Market. There is a phenomenal array of sandwiches and after much deliberation I go for one roast beef and one Italian. I can highly recommend Nica’s Market if you want fresh and tasty grub.

To avoid being hunted down by The Department of Homeland Security Mrs G has to register at the Office for International Students and Scholars. I tag along for the ride and then tootle off on my own into Downtown New Haven.

My first stop is at Richter’s Bar where I sample a Harpoon Summer Ale. I then browse in a few bookstores and somehow manage to refrain from buying a library’s worth of books. After a general bimble about I seek out the one and only video game shop which is located Downtown. Sadly, it has closed down.

To cheer myself up from this devastating event I walk back to our apartment (via Orange) and stop at Orange Street Liquor Shop. Before entering I take a picture of the storefront. Once inside the following conversation ensues:

Person In Store: Are you taking photos of historic New Haven Buildings?
Me: Is this an historic New Haven Building?
Person In Store: No.

I couldn’t help but laugh out loud and replied that I’d just have to make something up. I leave with a six pack of Amber Red Rock Ale and a bottle of Penfolds Koonunga Hill Shiraz Cabernet.

Back at the ranch Mrs G and I have Roast Vegetable Pizza (which was surprisingly delicious), drink beer and wine and watch a bit of the Democratic National Convention at which Barack Obama’s nomination for the US Presidency is made official.

Having only one viewable channel on the TV we stream a couple of programmes from the internet before retiring for the evening.

Tuesday 26th August 2008

Another 7:00 rise, another quiet morning.

Lunch is again in the Quadrangle. Today it’s build your own salad day. Having had a lot of vegetarian food recently it’s nice to have some ham cubes and bits of chicken to sprinkle on the rabbit food. To be fair, there’s a good selection of salad stuff which is more appetising than it appears. The star of lunch though is the cookies.

It seems a bit odd to have a cookies with salad but that’s just the way it’s done here. The peanut butter cookies are possibly the greatest cookies I have ever eaten. Slightly crunchy on the bottom, moist in the middle, chunks of peanuts and the most wonderful texture and taste. They are, quite simply, HAMAZING! I add them to my list of “Essential Foods to live on in America” (along with Fruit Loops and Beer).

After lunch we check out the laundry in the basement, raid the free room and chat with Rebekah who wanders over. Then it’s time for another food event.

You may be surprised to learn that despite all the free food we’ve been having there are very few … hmm … how can I put this delicately … there are very few fatties about. Sure, there’s the occasional porker who could clearly do with spending more time at the salad bar, but on the whole the Americans we’ve seen are no lardier than the Brits.

The main meal is shredded pork with barbecue sauce, mac ‘n’ cheese and salad stuffs. There’s a keg of beer from the Sierra Nevada microbrewery which compliments the food rather well.

We spend a fair bit of time chatting with Benji who is a big fan of English comedy, especially Fawlty Towers and anything with Ricky Gervais in it. Benji is from Arizona and he drove to Yale. This took him five nights/six days. America really is quite large.

Mrs G goes back to the apartment as she’s feeling a bit tired. Benji, Rebekah and I head off to Archie Moore’s where some other Yalies are hanging out. We’re joined by Jess from Texas who was driven to Yale by her Dad. He drove for 36 hours with only a two-hour rest along the way. Madness I tell you.

Rebekah decides that she would like to join a secret society. Fortunately for her Yale is home to one of the best known of America’s secret societies: Skull and Bones. You can even find their building on local maps. This seems to me to be somewhat contrary to the spirit of a secret society but Rebekah is undeterred. She hopes to blag her way in by using her English accent to bamboozle the Bonesmen (as they’re known) into believing that she has connections with royalty. I’ll keep you posted with how that works out for her.

There’s a rather rowdy table near to us. Our American friends inform me that they are slightly older, single (probably divorced) women who are known as “Cougars”. The phrase “mutton dressed as lamb” springs to mind. I pity any of the freshers that fall into their claws.

Before leaving I try another American beer called Blue Moon. It’s slightly effervescent and has a bit of a citrus taste to it. Not unpleasant and I will no doubt have a pint or two in the future.

On the walk back we are passed by a flatbed truck which stops not far from us. Rebekah decides to ask the driver if he’s going up the hill so she can get a lift. Benji and I do the chivalrous thing: we put our heads down, keep walking and leave Rebekah to it. The truck driver is not going our way (which is only a few hundred yards away in any case) so Rebekah rejoins us. She explains that the driver seemed somewhat petrified. Having a mad English woman come towards you out of the dark and given reports of shootings in the area I wonder why.

Monday 25th August 2008

We wake up at a very reasonable 7:00 am. Mrs G seems to have slept well so the limbs of our neighbours are safe. I put a pot of coffee on and have a leisurely morning reading, playing Kirby and eating Fruit Loops.

Today we are able to attend to some exceedingly important business: registering our laptop so we can connect to the internet. We toddle off to see IT support around 11:00 and are assisted by a very pleasant and helpful chap called Paul. To access the Yale network Mrs G has to enter her username and password. These were emailed to her some months ago. So to access the Yale network she has to connect to her email which she can’t do until she retrieves her information from her email.

Fortunately, this Catch 22 situation is resolved by visiting The Registrar’s Office and obtaining the necessary details from them. Half an hour later and we can now connect to t’interweb! I feel whole again!! Well, almost. I still have to get a 360 to be complete.

Mrs G has to attend the first of many Before The Fall Orientation (BTFO) events, leaving me to catch up on emails, upload photos, read forums, browse randomly and get my blog notes into some semblance of order. I also enjoy the remains of my pastrami sandwich for lunch and consume copious cups of coffee.

A brief burst of rain is followed by a brief thunderstorm. This does nothing to affect the heat and the sunny weather we’ve been experiencing since we arrived soon returns.

Mrs G arrives back from BTFO at 5:50 and advises me that an evening meal will be available at 6:00. I immediately stop what I am doing, get ready and head off to the Quadrangle where the food tents have been set up. We are provided with a number of vegetarian Indian dishes, all of which are rather tasty. This goes well with the real lemonade (not fizzy pop) and is followed by desserts made by staff and students.

As part of BTFO, Mrs G was put into a small group. I will now relate one of the true stories to come out of this:

The Dog and The Suitcase

In the not too distant past a couple looked after a largish dog for some relatives who went away on holiday. The dog had seen many years of life and sadly died while the owners were away. The woman informed the relatives of this unhappy news and asked what they would like her to do.

The owners wanted the dog to be either buried or cremated but were so upset that they asked the woman if she would take care of the arrangements so that they wouldn’t have to do it when they returned from their vacation. The woman dutifully agreed.

Not having any transport of her own she had to catch a train to the pet cemetery. Not having any specialised dead-dog carrying equipment she packed the deceased canine into a suitcase.

At the train station she struggled to get the suitcase through the turnstile. A passing gentleman kindly assisted her and enquired as to why the suitcase was so heavy. Too embarrassed to tell the truth the woman said that she was transporting a PC and accessories.

After the train journey the woman again struggled at the turnstile until the same gentleman once again came to her rescue. Once he was through the turnstile he then ran off with the suitcase.

I suspect he was surprised to find out how few USB ports his new PC had.

The rest of the evening is spent chatting with all and sundry at the Quadrangle, including the lovely, bubbly Jenny who we first met at Westcott last year when she was over from Yale on the exchange programme. We wander over to the apartment and spend some time hanging around the stairwell, talking with some of our fellow block-mates.

Back in our rooms I round the evening off with a refreshing peppermint tea.

Sunday 24th August 2008


In addition to crickets and chair scrapping we also have someone practicing their flamenco on a tiled surface while wearing high heels. Mrs G is turning homicidal and muttering about chainsaws. Our body clocks wake us at 4:00 am and we drift in and out of sleep until getting up at 6:30.

Although we haven’t had the most restful of nights I feel like we’re starting to get into the swing of things. Have a cuppa, read a bit, bowl of Fruit Loops, read some more, another cuppa, snooze, cuppa, Nintendo DS. Life in America is good.

Eventually we decide to go and visit the grocery store. Having ascertained the correct driveway to start from and the correct hill to go down we confidently make our way along Canner Street. We arrive at the grocery store to find that it is closed all day Sunday.

Undaunted, we head down Orange Street until we reach Romeo and Ceasar’s Deli. Thankfully it is open. This used to be Romeo and Giuseppe’s but apparently there was an acrimonious dispute between the owners (which I like to imagine involved a horse’s head under a duvet) and Giuseppe joined forces with the rival Nica’s Market further along Orange. We order a root beer, steak pizzaiola sub and some rosemary & olive oil chips (crisps) and sit in the shade for a while under one of their yellow umbrellas.

We wander a bit further along Orange, taking note of places to eat and places to shop (liquor store), before making our way back to Romeo and Ceasar’s for another drink (Sprite) and to pick up some essential supplies: coffee beans (which we grind ourselves); coffee filters; Doctor Pepper’s; cookies; pizza.

Back at the apartment we continue our integration into the American way of life by drinking more tea, reading and having an afternoon nap.

During the course of the afternoon Rebekah and Ellen (the other two exchange students from Westcott House, Cambridge, UK) turn up so we brew them some tea and eat the remains of the rosemary & olive oil chips while catching up.

We take a look at Rebekah’s apartment which is smaller than ours but much better equipped. So we pinch her vacuum cleaner, bleach, a table and TV. I can only get two channels tuned in. One is showing the World Little League Baseball final between Hawaii and Mexico (yay) and the other a rather fuzzy-pictured Everybody Hates Chris. I won’t be watching much TV. I will, however, be buying an Xbox 360 so that we can watch DVDs and listen to music. I may even play a game on occasion although I’m not really known for that.

While on our wanderings earlier in the day we spotted a place called Archie Moore’s. As we are now experts at finding our way around the area we head there for a meal with Ellen and Rebekah. It’s a real slice of Americana. The walls are covered in Coca-Cola signs, baseball is showing on the TV, our waitress is unbelievably friendly and you can put weight on just by looking at the menu.

The house speciality is Buffalo Wings which is chicken legs coated in Buffalo Sauce (named after the place rather than the animal) and served with bleu cheese dip. We order a small platter to share as a starter. For the main course I have Grilled Pastrami Reuben: thinly sliced grilled pastrami served with Russian dressing, sauerkraut and Swiss cheese on grilled rye. It is wonderful but I can only manage to eat half of it (plus the fries and pickle) so the waitress packs up the remains to go.

Having been informed by the Chief of Police that a student was robbed and shot (in the hand) a few days ago I ask the waitress is she thinks the area is safe enough to walk in at night. She breezily assures us that she will be happily jogging around the area when her shift finishes. We therefore cheerily make our way back to the apartments. Besides, Mrs G and I are from Nottingham so gun crime is really rather passé as far as we’re concerned.

Saturday 23rd August 2008

So we didn’t have a great night’s sleep despite having gone to bed absolutely knackered after being up for around twenty-two hours. In addition to the crickets, someone on the floor above decided that dragging a chair repeatedly across their non-carpeted floor would be a fun thing to do in the middle of the night. Mrs G wants to shoot them but I suggest that may not be the best response for someone training to be a priest.

We get up at 7:00 am local time and have a cuppa with a bowl of Fruit Loops for breakfast. Fruit Loops may be one of the greatest inventions ever. You can tell just by looking at them that they provide all the nutrients that the body needs. I consider living on them while I’m here.

Mrs G proceeds to iron the bed linen and clean the apartment, which is not up to “The Queen of Clean’s” standards. You may be wondering why I, as the house husband, am not doing this. Well, Mrs G is a bit stressed and she finds cleaning therapeutic so I feel it best to just let her get on with it. That’s how considerate I am. I will, of course, be resuming my cleaning regime once we have had a chance to get bleach, rubber gloves and all other necessary equipment.

It’s quite tiring watching Mrs G clean so I read for a bit and play Kirby and the Amazing Mirror while making encouraging noises in her general direction.

We decide to explore the area a bit and get some food. We set off following the route Justin took us on yesterday as we know there are some shops within walking distance along the way. After travelling for quite some time we realise that we have absolutely no idea where we are going so we head back to the apartment and have a cup of tea with grape jelly on toast for lunch followed by an afternoon nap. We later discover that although our initial directions were correct (turn right out of the driveway and go down the hill) we had started from the wrong driveway and gone down the wrong hill.

Around 5:00 we get to go to The Free Room. This is a place where outgoing students leave things they no longer require: sofas; cutlery; crockery; towels; pictures; oven gloves; and so on. We, along with the other international visitors, can help ourselves to whatever we need. We grab some essentials and Mrs G sticks post-it notes on the larger items so we can collect them at a later date. I take a coffee table back with us to replace the one we have which looks like it came over on The Mayflower.

We get taken out for a meal with the other International Students who are about. There are fourteen of us in all with folk from Belarus, Canada, China, Germany, Ghana, Hong Kong and South Korea. We go to a bar called The Playwright which is an American Irish bar (note: not American-Irish). I have a Dustin the Turkey’s Club washed down with a couple of pints of Samuel Adams Summer Ale. The ale is superb but for some strange reason it comes served with a slice of lemon. That’s right. Lemon. In ale. WTF?!?!

On the topic of alcohol, Connecticut has some regulations (known as Blue Laws) which prohibit the sale of alcohol to take away after 9:00 pm Monday to Saturday, or at all on Sundays. What’s more, you can only buy carry-out alcohol from liquor stores. Being the moderate drinker that I am, these laws will cause me no problem. After all, the bars are open till late.

While on the Transit back to YDS I notice a chap sitting opposite us with a face flannel draped on his head. Said chap is a rather large, muscular, swarthy fellow, about as wide as he is tall. He is dressed in denim dungarees and I can see cornrows sticking out from under the rear of the flannel. I suppress my impulse to ask him about this mysterious fashion statement and leave the bus none-the-wiser.

Back at the apartment we have an early night and manage to drift off to sleep. Despite the bloody crickets.

Friday 22nd August 2008

The alarm goes off at stupid o’clock. I stumble about getting ready, gulp down a can of Kick (Tesco’s imitation Red Bull) then blob in front of the TV with a cuppa waiting for Dad to come and pick us up. The lead story on the news is about a plane crash in Spain. How very auspicious. I turn the TV off.

Dad gets us to Birmingham airport in plenty of time and we join the rather long check-in queue. A woman approaches to ask if we checked in online. Mrs G has done this and, being the ultra-organised person that she is, instantly produces two beautifully printed boarding cards and we find ourselves in a queue of one. We pass through security easily, grab a bite to eat and are fairly quickly settled on the 757 which takes off pretty much on time.

The entertainment provided on-board is far superior to anything I’ve encountered before. Each passenger has their own screen (operated by touch) with a choice of free films, TV programmes, music and games, all available on demand. We don’t even have to pay for the headphones.

The screen also enables us to pull up various details of our flight such as altitude, speed, temperature, travel time, etc. The world map flashes up and shows the plane’s current position. This initially causes consternation for Mrs G as she mistakes Mexico for Italy. I help her overcome her geographical inadequacies and all is well as she can now watch a girlie film with complete peace of mind.

The first meal we are served is much better quality than what you’d expect to receive in a hospital. Some sort of chicken dish. Normally, these can be quite challenging to eat as the plastic cutlery usually provided is rarely up to the task of making an impression on the foodstuff. Fortunately, Continental Airlines have provided metal cutlery in a plastic bag. Unfortunately, the bag is unsealed at one end so the knife and fork plunge (sharp side down) into my lap piercing my nadgers. Once the other passengers and I have recovered from the shock of this I am able to enjoy the food.

I start a book called Quirkology by Richard Wiseman which I borrowed from my parents’ toilet. Here I learn the story of serial murderer John Gacy. “Gacy was a sadistic killer who received twelve death sentences and twenty-one life terms for the torture and killing of thirty-three men and boys.” In his spare time he dressed up as Pogo the Clown and performed at children’s birthday parties. Srsly!

As we approach Newark Liberty International Airport we can see the Empire State Building and The Statue of Liberty. We touch down at 12:00 pm local time and are seen by Customs and Border Protection (Department of Homeland Security) an hour later. The folk we see are very pleasant and upon learning that we will be celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary in December state that “Snoop Dogg has nothing on you.”

A mere fifteen minutes or so later the driver from Continental Limousines greets us and we are soon being driven along Henry Hudson Parkway, then through The Bronx and on to Connecticut.

We arrive at Yale Divinity School, New Haven around 4:00 pm and are eventually greeted and taken to our apartment. Although the rooms are furnished we are missing some fairly essential items like bedding, towels, food and toilet paper. Justin (who has brought us to the apartment) offers to give us a lift so we can buy supplies.

We have a quick freshen-up, unpack and rearrange the furniture to Mrs G’s specifications (just what I felt like doing after being on the go for umpteen hours) and then Justin picks us up, gives us a whirlwind tour of Yale and New Haven and takes us to Walmart.

Shopping always perks Mrs G up and $130.00 later we have enough stuff to get us through a couple of days. Justin drops us off, we make the bed, have a cuppa and finally settle down around 9:30 pm (2:30 am UK time) to sleep.

And then we hear the crickets. BASTARDOS!!!