Reverse Culture Shock

We went to the annual auction for our daughter’s preschool last night, and were impressed by the explosion of good will. A bidding frenzy exploded over a painting which included dots created by one year olds sticking their finger into paint, and placing them onto a canvas. It went for almost three hundred dollars.  A man physically restrained his wife to keep her from bidding again.

I really admire the enthusiasm Atlantans have for school fundraising. A woman told us that the playground at her son’s elementary school was lacking. You might hear a similar complaint in the UK, but it would be followed by a closing comment, such as: “Doesn’t that suck?” and then the subject would be changed. 

This woman explained that she was on the board of the committee that would raise money and manpower to remodel the playground. 

We left the auction with a footstool, painted with the footprints of our daughter and her classmates (only $80 — we clinched it early in the evening, before cocktails loosened the bidding hands), hand-made burp clothes for $20, and the warm fuzzy feeling of having helped the school.

I just got back from a week long trip to London, where we visited my in-laws, saw lots of friends, and tried to hunt down my wedding dress, which appears to be well and truly gone.

The one bright spot out of that whole mess is that it looks like the dress did not end up in a landfill in East London, as I had feared; rather, it appears that the dress was stolen. The fact that the dress might be worn again makes me feel a bit better — even if the new wearer is a thief.

London is always a great place to visit.  But it’s an odd feeling to return after having lived there, and to feel like you don’t really belong there anymore.

But we’re not sure we belong here either — we returned to a note from our landlord, saying that her lender is foreclosing on her house, and we need to move out in the next two months.  Welcome home, indeed….

While my husband and I speak the same language, we still find little discrepancies between British and American expressions. Even after nearly five years of marriage, I still find myself explaining such cultural phenomenons as opposite day, which came up during last Thursday’s episode of 30 Rock.

Apparently, kids in the UK don’t play the hilarious game of saying to friends: “I’d like to hang out with you…if it were OPPOSITE DAY!!”

Then he described playing “Tig” during recess at school, instead of “Tag.” Who would have thought that such a random word would have a different translation in the UK?

Other words, like garden (yard), estate agent (realtor), nappy (diaper) he’s grown accustomed to saying.  Now in that we’re in the South, I suppose we’ll have to start saying “Y’all”….

We interviewed a nanny yesterday, and asked her our standard question: how do you effectively look after two young kids, who are just 18 months apart, at the same time?

She paused, then replied: “I pray.”  She explained that she will ask God to keep the children safe while in her care.

While I admire her religious devotion, I worry that she might think that prayer takes some of the responsibility for the kids’ safety off of her.  I imagined coming home to find one of the kids injured, and hearing her say: “It was God’s will.”

Maybe I’m overreacting.  If she had mentioned prayer as her third, or even second option for helping her to watch over the kids, I would have felt a bit better. But as the first response, it made me think that perhaps we should look for someone who relied more on themselves, rather than their God, to help look after our kids.

I am in awe of our washing machine and dryer. They are both massive, yet efficient.  In my seven and a half years in London, I never owned a dryer.  Our washing machine was tiny, so we ended up doing laundry all the time.

In our last flat in London, we had a combination washer/dryer. It was supposed to morph into a dryer once the washing cycle finished. Instead of drying clothes, though, it just made them incredibly hot.

When you tried to take the clothes out, forgetting how hot they were, you would drop them as you cursed the machine, then massage your burned hand, and watch as steam rose from the clothes that were then balled up on the kitchen floor.  

The washing and drying cycles took more than three hours. I can’t say precisely how long they took, because we never actually made it to the end. After three and a half hours, we finally aborted the cycle, and stuck to the “quick wash” function in subsequent washes (still an hour and a half long).

To dry clothes, we hung them on a rack in the bathroom.  Sheets we draped over doors. One weekend, when both kids had the flu, we had to do about ten loads of laundry to clean  the ensuing rivers of vomit.

There were pants hanging over doorknobs, socks on drawer handles, and towels on the floor.  The whole place smelled of damp and mold.  

So the most awesome part of our new dryer is that we actually have one.

I went to a play group yesterday, with my two kids in tow. It was our debut at this particular play group — a mom I know from my daughter’s preschool had just moved away, and said she could get me in.

All the other play groups in the neighborhood are fully booked.  

As we don’t know many people here, I was pleased to have a social event.  We were the first to arrive. My daughter ate two cookies —  which looked like a lot, as there were only about ten laid out — played with puzzles, kicked a ball. Only one other mom arrived, which the host said was strange, as six had RSVPed, but then, of course, it was just a casual play group that met once a week.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I came home to an email from the host complaining that only one mom showed up (ahem. Actually, TWO showed up.  I suppose because I’m new, I don’t count) even though six had said they would come.  She had gone to the trouble of cleaning her house and preparing snacks (there were only TEN cookies!) so she deserved notice that others didn’t plan to show up.

I’ve had business meetings with less stringent RSVP policies than this play group.  Others seemed to be outraged by the email, as well.  Four women replied that they were dropping out of the play group. Seems a bit drastic — back when I was working, if someone sent an angry email, colleagues would shrug their shoulders and hit delete. There wasn’t much time for this level of drama.

I wondered what I had gotten myself into.  Then one lovely women replied to the thread of angry emails to say: “Has anyone welcomed our newest member?”

That was met with e-silence.