God Save the Queen.

After taking a long break from blogging here I am again.

As a military spouse I have noticed that the USA are a hell of a lot more proud of their Armed Forces than the UK, and a lot more patriotic in general, the Stars and Stripes flags fly everywhere from sports stadiums to rigt outside people's houses. Before sports games, which a few members of a military branch are invited to for free, the crowd stop what they are doing, remove their hats and sing the National Anthem. All of them. I can't imagine this happening at a Premier League game, can you? On a side note, the American National Anthem is the only one in the world to end in a question mark.

Military members and their immediate family get a discount almost anywhere they go. Car bumper stickers proudly claim that a family member is in the military or the driver is a retired veteran. Why is it that Britain, with all of it's incredible history, isn't anywhere near as patriotic? British natives seem all to keen to show their colours when there is a World Cup or European Championships on, with everyone wearing football sirts, cars bearing flags and the St George's cross hanging from windows everywhere. Come on England, we have a lot to be proud of!

EVERYTHING IS BIGGER IN AMERICA

EVERYTHING IS BIGGER IN AMERICA

Let’s start off with the country itself. It’s mind bogglingly HUGE. There are 50 States that share the 3.79 million square miles of land and over 312 million people. Making it the fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest country by both land area and population in the world. If you’re interested the countries that are bigger, land mass wise, are Canada, India and China.

This is why everything is bigger here; most houses are only 1 story high and have a great sized garden, pavements and roads are wider, because they have the space. Simple.

If you don’t have access to a car in America you are up the creek without a paddle. We are lucky that we have some places within walking distance of home, but most neighbourhoods are just that. Houses, with not much, save maybe a 7/11 or CVS within walking distance. It is said that 90% of the US population lives within 5 miles of a major highway.

There are 13 million major highways in the USA, making it the longest highway system in the world. People definitely have an easier time driving them here than in Europe too. It’s nothing for someone to drive for an hour each way to go out to eat or 2 or 3 hours to see family, that’s considered close. We recently drove from Northern California to Seattle for Christmas, a 14 hour, 760 mile trip each way. In that time and distance you could drive from my hometown of Redditch through France to Switzerland.

Cars need to be bigger here in order to tackle these roads and long journeys. Every family seems to own a truck and I have not seen a car with a smaller engine than 1.8 litres. But that doesn’t matter; petrol is half the price it is in the U.K. On a side note, most of the cars in America are automatic, meaning I have seen people drive with their left leg underneath their bottom. This freaked me out a little when I first saw it, but not as much as when I realised I could drive using no feet at all. While driving one of the 13 million highways I discovered cruise control. You can set your car to constantly go at the same speed until you press the brake or accelerator.       

University sports in England are just something to do on a Wednesday afternoon when there are no lectures. Here they are BIG business. Played of a weekend and often televised, college sports often have more fans than professional leagues. Take American football for example, the largest stadium is Michigan Stadium (Pictured), the home of the Michigan Wolverines in Ann Arbor. It holds a maximum of 109,901 people and the smallest is William Price Stadium, home of the Norfolk State Spartans in Norfolk, Virginia. It holds a maximum of 30,000, just short of the unofficial average attendance for a Barclays Premier League game this season. The league, which is home to Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal, averages around 34,445 fans per game. I have even seen high school stadiums that seat thousands.

Only 37% of Americans own a passport. Why is this? I think it’s due to the fact that this country has everything! From the beaches in Miami and Hawaii to the big cities of New York and Los Angeles to the natural beauty of the 58 national parks, why would anyone need to leave?

FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD

One of the biggest things I miss about home, apart from family and friends is the food. Some days I would kill for a bacon or sausage sandwich on crusty bread with brown sauce. The bacon in America is a lot like that which you typically find at McDonalds and Burger King in the U.K, thin and crispy. The sausage links are really thin and often come in strange flavours, such as maple syrup. As for the bread, I can find crusty bread, but it’s not a patch on the uncut loaves from home.  

One of the phrases that come out of my mouth when the wife and I are eating out is “Flavour Overload” I think this is because a lot of the grub in the States is very rich. All of the foods I miss the most from home are very simple, traditionally British. Like Yorkshire pudding, Toad in the hole, Shepherd’s Pie and Meat Pies. These foods have been eaten in the British Isles for centuries and because of their origins from a time when the Country was industrial and the food had to be cheap to make and therefore are quite plain.

During our road trip across country to California we stopped for lunch with some old friends of Aelisa’s family in Knoxville, Tennessee. The lady of the house moved to the USA from Southampton, England over a decade ago. She said the main reason she would never consider going to live back in England is the fact that America has so much choice, you can get what you want, how you want it, anytime of the day. This is true; most places are open 24 hours a day, even Denny’s, a place to buy breakfast food.

Chilis

A good example of the options available to the average dinner is the hamburger. If you go out to eat and choose to eat one of America’s most famous foods you often have 5 or 6 varieties to choose from. One of my favourite places to eat is Chilis. Here is a picture and description of one of just one of their hamburgers.

Shiner Bock BBQ Burger - A burger to crave, topped with sweet ‘n’ tangy Shiner Bock® BBQ sauce, cheddar and crispy onion strings.

 You first choose the kind of bread you desire, how you would like your meat cooked (rare-well done) and then it’s up to you if you want everything as described in the menu or you can add, take away items or substitute items. Then there are side orders, usually a form of potato and something to dip them in. Whatever you don’t eat you can take home with you in a box. Something which I have never seen in the British Isles.

Incidentally, Chilis had some restaurants in the London and Essex area of the UK but they closed at some point in 2009. I don’t know why!

Why is the stereotypical British view of Americans that they are overweight? I used to think it was down to portion sizes. But consider the average meal from a British Chip shop. It’s HUGE! I recently read that dining out is better for you than eating at home, because there is a limit to the size of the portion put in front of you. This seems sensible to me, because when eating at home you tend to eat whatever you cook, and we are finding it tricky here to make a meal for just two people. This brings me on to how food is served at home in Britain compared to the USA. My experience growing up at home was that the person who cooked the meal served it as they deemed fit on the plates and placed it on the table in front of you. On this side of the Atlantic, as you have no doubt seen on television and the big screen, the chef will cook the food and either place it along with empty plates on the table in front of the dinners to help themselves or simply leave it in the kitchen for you to do the same.

This seems to rule out portion sizes. So it must be the kind of food eaten. Fast food is something that is often associated with America. Driving down any street you can see an abundance of bright signs for fast food chains, McDonalds, Burger King,  Taco Bell, Wendy’s and Sonic to name but a few. The simple reason why these places are so common and widely used is the price. All of them have dollar menus and a family can eat there for under $30. I have joked in the past that the problem to America’s, and indeed the world’s growing obesity problem is simple, make it cheaper to eat healthily. There are healthy places to eat here, places like Panera Bread and Chipotle are just as easily accessible as fast food chains but often cost up to twice as much! Same goes for eating at home, convenience food from the freezer department is easier to prepare and usually much cheaper than eating fresh food.

Tipping, here in the USA it is customary to tip a waitress or waiter upto 15% of your total bill, it is upto you to determine how much to give depending on how good you rate the service. This is because waiting staff only earn a few dollars per hour (there is no minimum wage for this job). Even a barman expects a tip for pouring you a drink.

I have spoken to people here that find it incredible that petrol stations in the UK do not let you fill a plastic cup with Coca Cola for a bargain price or restaurants do not offer refillable soft drinks at no extra charge.  

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love American foods and the options available to me at any time of the day; it’s just a whole different world to the food at home (why do I still call it home? California is my home now!)

I NO SPEAK AMERICANO!

When my wife and I have discussions about what something is called or how a word is pronounced, which happens quite often, we always end up saying the same things. Her retort is always “Liam, you live in America now, go with it” and mine is always

 “Well, what language are we speaking? It’s English, so I am right!”

Truth is, the discussion never ends because like it or not, although we both speak the same language, we speak it differently. I was thinking about how to write this account, and in truth I am still unsure. Maybe I’ll go with British English and put the American translation in brackets, for no other reason than my Gran can understand it better that way.

A good example of how the two languages differ happened just the other day, I was talking to a friend about going to the hospital to get some injections for my visa application and when referred to them as “Jabs” he looked at me weird and first asked if I was looking for a “Job”, my accent confuses most people here, even friends. But even when I repeated myself, my friend thought someone had punched me. After some miming and explanation on my part it turns out that the American term for injections is “Shots” and not the kind you drink.

Everywhere I go people comment on my accent and ask where I am from. Most people in America have family history in Europe, so this sparks a conversation. But only once during Aelisa’s numerous trips to England did someone comment on her accent, this was a teenage cashier at Primark! Why is this? Is it simply because Brits grow up on a diet of American television and film? People often try to imitate my accent too, but they all sound the same, posh. People have an obsession here with the Royal family and people drinking tea and eating scones at a white table made of iron in the afternoons. The recent royal wedding was everywhere in the media here.

When I speak to my family on the phone they often comment that I am sounding more American, and it isn’t my accent, it’s my tone of voice. I know from meeting other ex-pats living in the area (there’s more than you would imagine) that my accent is here to stay, thank god, but it is the tone of my voice which will change. I am O.K. with that, I think.

Spellings, anyone who has used a computer to type up a word document or an email with spell checker turned on will know that because of the stupid squiggly red line, American’s omit the letter U from certain words like colour, neighbour, flavour and favourite. You will also know that words like personalise are spelt with a Z (Zed, not Zee) instead of an S or theatre and centre are spelt with the E and R the other way around. It is a running joke that when I start teaching that my class will always lose a spelling bee (something I have only seen once in England) because I will teach them the English way to spell things. Probably true, but who and when did America decide to take these vowels from their words and apply these different spelling rules?

I have read that it is because of different interpretations of the Latin language. British people owe their spelling to the Norman French speakers who invaded during the Norman Conquest in 1066 and America decided to stick with traditional Latin language and a Dr Samuel Johnson’s 1755 ‘A dictionary of the English Language’ which was worldly renowned as the ‘bible’ of the English language until the Oxford English dictionary came along some 150 years later. Ironically, Dr Johnson was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, England.

Another reason for the friendly discussions about the English language in the McEvilly household is the difference in vocabulary. For example, like most British people my favo(u)rite sport is football, and because I have coached the sport over here and I am lucky enough that my in-laws are sports fans, people are surprised when I refer to it as soccer. I am also a fan of NFL, which is referred to in these parts as football, although only two plays on a team kick the ball, everyone else uses their hands. A few other translations, other than Jam – Jelly, for British people to bear in mind if they visit this part of the world are:

Shopping trolley – Kart

Shop of any sort – Store

Road – Street

Path – Sidewalk

Indicators (in a car) – Blinkers

A Flat – Apartment

Handbag – Purse

Purse – Wallet

Cellophane – Cling Film

Baby Grow - Onsie

And the one that ALWAYS gets me is Anti-Clockwise – Counter clockwise.

Then there is the fact that American people often use brand names to describe objects, such as Kleenex for tissues, the kind your Gran carries in her handbag, Band Aids for plasters and Q-Tips for cotton wool buds.

Finally, there’s pronunciation. Everyone knows the old adage “You say Tom-ay-to, I say Tomato” but Americans also pronounce Aluminum as A-loo-minum and Semi as Sem-I instead of Sem-E. Iran and Irak are pronounced Eye-Ran and Eye-Raq here as as Al Qaeda being pronounced by Americans as Al-Kay-da instead of Al-kay-ee-da.

I know that these differences may not be huge, but they certainly make life a little more difficult for me, even if it is down to having to explain myself through mime or going into more detail (that’s dee-tail not d-tail) when conversing with people.

A little bit of writing.....

Introduction

Aelisa, Blue and I at
The Grand Canyon, Arizona.

Hi, my name is Liam McEvilly, I am British born and currently live in Vacaville, Northern California, USA with my American wife, Aelisa, who is in the U.S. Air Force and our Beagle, Blue.  

I have previously visited these shores on a backpacking trip in 2004 seeing California, Arizona, Nevada, Texas and New York, 3 consecutive summers teaching children how to kick a football (the round, leather one) in a straight line at a prestigious summer camp in New Hampshire and spent most of my student loan and University holidays over here visiting Aelisa in Texas Delaware, Virginia and Maryland. After we were married we drove 3000 miles (where can you end up if you drive for this long in England? More later) from East coast to West to start our married life living together here in California, where Aelisa is currently stationed for her job with the Air Force. The trip took us through Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and eventually California, taking almost 2 weeks to complete.

When I moved across the Atlantic people back home in Redditch, Worcestershire thought that I would not encounter many differences in living here compared to living in the land of blighty. They were wrong…..

This is a written account of my experiences with all things American during my visits and living here. These may or may not include cars driving themselves, toilets with too much water in the bowl and Ranch dressing.