My job is painful

Augh! I've been threading a loom with linen thread that is really rough. It's meant to be for linen placemats. But it's so rough and tough that in tying up the end of the warp to the stick, pretty much the last step before the resident starts weaving, (as seen in this picture)I wore small but really painful blisters on the outsides of my pinkies and the inside of my pointer fingers. I'm very happy working in the weavery three days a week, but it does hurt sometimes!

Project for Awesome time!

Here's the video that I've made for the Project for Awesome about the Camphill community where I'm living and working this year. Project for Awesome is a day when youtube promotes videos made by people who care about charity rather than kittens playing piano. Here's my video:

Riiiight...who is this really?

At the dinner table the other day, one of the residents was wearing what could only be described as a COSBY SWEATAH. I asked him if he was familiar with Bill Cosby, and he wasn't, but neither was the coordinator who would have had much more opportunity to encounter him. And when I said that he was an American comedian, he took cheap shots, "There is such a thing?" It stung a little, because, I mean, you just don't take cheap shots at Bill Cosby, but also because he had absolutely no idea who he was, and that would never happen with someone his age down to mine in America. Being somewhere that doesn't know how they should say "Jell-o pudding pops" suddenly feels very lonely.

New Anglotopia article

I am now a columnist for Anglotopia.net, a blog for and by Anglophiles (Brit lovers). I had been hanging around the forums for a while and offered to write articles while I'm in Milton Keynes. My latest is about Camphill Milton Keynes, the community where I live and work. You can read it here http://www.anglotopia.net/british-identity/living-in-the-uk/dispatches-from-milton-keynes-camphill-mk/. My other articles can be found under "Dispatches from Milton Keynes" in the Columns...column.

I've been having some strange dreams as I get used to England. Last night I had two: the first involved me driving a semi-truck (I think they call them lorries here but that might just be pick-ups) through the streets, then, unable to stop it, drove through a hospital, up and down several flights of stairs, then back onto the road where I finally figured out that I was driving on the right hand side of the road and everyone was just being polite and getting out of my way. I was very careful going around the corners in the hospital before I realized that it was a dream and I didn't have to worry about crashing into anything with the trailer. In the dream just before I woke up, I dreamt that Camphill was having a raffle for coworkers, but they hadn't told any of the coworkers (I swear this would happen in real life. We learn about our trainings the morning of) and I showed up just in time to be the first winner...of a can of Diet Coke (This would never happen in real life. Camphill is all about healthy, organic food, at least in principle).

Foreginers love Rice Krispie Treats

I was going to make s'mores for my cultural presentation about America in my co-worker group (all of my co-workers in England are from different countries and I'm the only one from the US) but the American food stores didn't have Jet Puff Marshmallows, which is a problem because British marshmallows are too solid to get heated up in the middle when you roast them. So I used the marshmallows to make Rice Krispie treats. I was being silly and passed them around as "a delicacy from my country" but everyone was super impressed and wanted to know what I called them.

Thank the Queen for NHS!

I've been in England for a little over a month now. I've already been registered with NHS (I can do that because I'm a worker here), had a urine test, and got all my paperwork. Yesterday I got a call from the office about my test results, telling me I had a UTI, which I suspected, but it wasn't bothersome enough for me to go in on my own. During the same phone call, they told me that they had a prescription ready for me to pick up and take to get some antibiotics. I went the next day and walked away with a week's worth of antibiotics. Total cost to me: 0 pounds.

On the other side of the pond, I had been on a "reservation list" for Oregon Health Plan (health care for low income people) since February or March, kept calling in to see if I'd been "chosen," sent in an application without approval from the lottery, and got denied. Last week, my parents got a notice letting me know that I had been picked from the reservation list for OHP.

God bless America, and God save the Queen.

London backvlog

When I arrived in London, my friend Dave picked me up and we had two days of mayhem before I went to Camphill