Hello

Dear Hunter and HP4,

Hello! I'm your mum's friend and I live in England. In Oxford, to be exact, which is right here. I'm as far away from the sea as it is possible to be here: 70 miles! The English think that's a long way, but as those of us who grew up in the States know, 70 miles is nothing.

Right at this moment, I'm watching a wonderful show called Lark Rise to Candleford
that I think you guys might love. Not least for the clothes :-)...it's showing in the US on PBS.

Ok, what to write in a first letter? Well, I was born in Takoma Park, Maryland and grew up in Silver Spring, about 20 minutes outside DC. I used to teach science at the Hebrew Academy of Greater Washington, a modern Orthodox Jewish school - and I loved every minute of it, not least because we had awesome rabbis.

After 4 years, I decided I wanted to go back to school and wanted to check out England, so I came to the University of Oxford. I loved it so much that after school, I stayed and worked in a publishing company and two libraries! I've been here since 1996 - before your parents were married, even ;-).

What did I find hard at first? Well, not everyone had watched "Sesame Street", for example. They didn't remember the same things. The language was really different:
not just "Mum" for "Mom", that's easy. But "jumper" for "sweater", "trousers" instead of "pants" ("pants" means "underwear" here), "pavement" instead of "sidewalk". I'm having trouble remembering a lot of them because I talk like a Brit now.

The food wasn't hard to get used to - people here love Indian (which I am, so curry is good!); fish and chips (ooo, another word! Chips = french fries, but thicker) and sausages and mash (mashed potatoes), as well as Sunday roasts (roasted chicken/beef/lamb, vegetables, roasted potatoes and Yorkshire puddings (yes, it's bread) were easy to get used to; puddings (desserts) like crumble and sponge can be AMAZING.

Other than that, it was getting used to having a different country on the weather map and how people did things - they're harder to get to know, they love to 'queue up' (stand in line), and say 'Sorry' even if it isn't their fault.

There's lots more - geography next time, I think. It's a beautiful country.

Please leave your questions in comments - or have your mums do it! Cheers (thanks)!

Irim xxxxx