When I moved to Chicago, I counted my lucky stars that I didn't have to learn a new language. I had enough on my plate: I was moving house for the fourth time in three years, moving away from family across the Atlantic, with a toddler and a new born in tow. I love learning about other cultures, but I am pretty crap at languages.

However, I very quickly learnt that I was learning a new language. You can't go to the supermarket (grocery store) and pick up a trolley (cart), and ask for aubergines, courgettes and nappies (eggplant, zucchini and diapers). People look at your blankly. And why wouldn't they? You are not speaking American.

So what about when people come to the UK, and have to navigate the subtleties and subtext of English? Here are some guidelines. This table has been doing the rounds on the internet. I can't claim to have written it, although I wish I had. The source has become untraceable, but bravo to the author.

Anything to add? Drop us a line below.

Each time I travel, I step into a time machine. An understanding of the past gives me an appreciation of the present. From there I can allow my mind to wander around the possibililities of the future.

But travel can also send me to new worlds that are full of drama and excitement, especially if the destination has been part of a film set. Sometimes I turn a corner and feel the familiar sense of déjà vu. The familiar scene I see however, evaporates with the realisation that I’ve only seen it on the silver screen.

Today, computer generated graphics are so realistic it’s often a challenge to work out film sets that are real, and those that are digitally created. So if you fancy stepping into a film here’s my top three untouched sets. Click the links for more information about each destination.


New Zealand & Middle Earth: no trip to New Zealand is complete without wandering around like Bilbo Baggins. The Lord of the Rings films are virtual adverts from the tourist board, with beautiful vistas of rolling green hills and craggy snow-capped mountains. Here’s more information about a trip to JRR Tolkein’s fantasy kingdom. 

• New Zealand in pictures

Jordan & the home of the Holy Grail: The Treasury at Petra, in Jordan, provided the stunning backdrop to Indiana Jones and the Crusade, as the entrance to the temple housing the Holy Grail. You used to be able to go inside The Treasury, but it’s now roped off. However, you would have been disappointed. It’s a plain dark square cavern. There are no curtains of cobwebs or wobbly stone floors waiting for an unsuspecting gold digger. Travel around Jordan for a week or more and travel through time from Roman rule to Lawrence of Arabia's desert.

• Jordan in pictures

Cambodia and the Temples of Doom: Ta Prohn, near Siem Reap, is the Angkor Wat temple that became part of Lara Croft’s Tomb Raider set, and Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom was also filmed here. Tree roots cling to and ooze over the ruins. Luckily I wasn’t offered any monkey brains. 

• Cambodia in pictures

Here’s a few more out of the way sets to explore:

• USA, Lower Manhattan, New York: The Tribeca firehouse at 14 North Moore Street made a star appearance in Ghostbusters.
• USA, Astoria, Oregon: the 19th century Captain George Flavel House Museum, was the Pirate Museum in The Goonies, where Mikey’s dad worked.
• UK, Monson Road, London: home of The Winchester pub in Shaun of the Dead, now renovated.
• UK, Carlton Street, Edinburgh: The stone bridge archway is the site of the opening scene in Trainspotting when Renton tries to run away after shoplifting.  

Where’s your favourite film set? We’d love to hear from you. Drop us a line.

We all have different opinions about the sort of person we envisage heading up the bread line. And then we all have a different image of where the poverty line is in relation to our individual wealth. 

On 16th September, 2010, the BBC World Service reported that 44 million American live in poverty, the highest number since the 1960s. “Poverty” is apparently a family of four living on less than $22,000 a year. Obviously, this can’t be compared to a country where poverty means whether you are going to be able to afford your next meal, otherwise is wouldn’t be a real barometer to test the apparent growth in wealth.

But it does sicken me that this is a country of want. Or is it called opportunity. I get the two mixed up sometimes. If you want something, apparently you must have it. There is very little mindset to save, or go without. Especially when it comes to your children, who are very often put on a pedestal.

In these times of relative austerity (and I’m embarrassed to use that term given the experiences of our grandparents during wartime rationing and postwar reconstruction), I would think it polite to just rein the extravagances in a little. You never know when that proverbial rain cloud will burst. 

Hallowe’en is a good example. Children expect piles and piles of chocolate. Adults do not disappoint. No matter that it is bad for them, and encouraging expectation is never a pleasing characteristic. Most houses have mountains of sweet, sticky, chewy delights, and given that you should have grown out of Trick or Treating (can’t say I saw any tricking) by the age of 11, there are a lot of hyperactive toddlers running around.

We were invited by friends to join the Trick or Treating in their neighbourhood, and I must say, despite my reservations, we had a really lovely evening. In England, negativity always seems to prevail, and the reverse can be said about our trans-Atlantic brothers. This is true even to the extent that an American friend will tell you about an up and coming event that will be “awesome”, but only three people show up, and there is more atmosphere in a funeral parlour. I’m being unkind, but you get the gist. In England, teenagers roam the streets, before, during and after the 31st October, pelting houses with eggs because the tradition of Trick or Treating has given them jurisdiction.

In the States, the event is conducted with a little more class. The fun is that little children get to dress up and everyone pulls together in a community-spirited event, meeting on street corners and front lawns to coo at the pint-sized monkeys (Madeleine’s costume), tigers (Tilda’s), witches and ladybirds. It doesn’t even matter what the children wear as long as everyone joins in the spirit.

I still can’t stand the thought of children begging from door to door, but that isn’t how it is seen. If you don’t want to take part, you leave your porch light off. And the time for Trick or Treating is restricted to a few short hours during daylight, as dictated by the local council. How civilised. Goodness know what would become of you if you knocked on a door on the wrong day. It’s unheard of. American’s like their rules, and generally people like to stick to them.

One American tradition that is not conducted with such class is election campaigning. Campaigning seems to go on for months and months. We received so many recorded messages from candidates and their supporters that we don’t even answer the home phone any more. We can’t even vote, so it is a particularly ridiculous and pointless exercise.

The messages I particularly object to, whether by phone or TV, are anti-campaigning. For example: “You shouldn’t vote for X because he is known to be linked to gang crime and your children will have no future.” For all the praise I can heap on this country for its positive attitude, I can heap as much scorn for the nasty, factless tripe that is aired. This may be a country of free speech but I would have thought that as a country of litigious intent, there would be some attempt to stem the slander and libel. Or maybe it is all true. I’m afraid the only change in behaviour it has stirred in me, is to turn the TV off and close my ears. 

So the weather is now turning a little chilly. Looking at the UK temperatures it seems to be about the same at the moment, around 0-5C. However, the wind chill has to be factored in. It’s only the end of November and I’m already having to build up my courage every time I go out. It’s mainly the hassle factor. You don’t want to wear your coats in the car (Mam’s voice in my head from childhood days: “Take your coat off so you’ll feel the benefit when you go out.”), and you can’t do the children’s seatbelt up with them on anyway as they are too bulky. But then when you park and you need to get coats on it starts to feel like a military operation. It’s all an experience of course, and as people start to put up some pretty spectacular light displays, it’s also very pretty. Do you know there are companies dedicated to putting lights up and down each year? There’s a house down the road that looks like the gingerbread house. The festivities start at Thanksgiving and finish at the end of January.

I wasn’t really sure what Thanksgiving was going to be about really. Obviously, traditionally it was for the founding fathers to give thanks to Native Americans for providing shelter and food (before they then shoved them off their land and into reserves). Today, for most people it is still about food. Platefuls and platefuls of beige food; turkey, sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top (just wrong), chicken noodles, bread, stuffing with a colourful dollop of cranberry sauce (well, you need some sort of fruit or vegetable), all followed by a huge piece of pumpkin pie and mountains of gelatinous desserts welded together with high fructose corn syrup.

For the most part, people get two days holiday and given there is very little holiday time here (some companies force employees to accrue holiday from day one), this is a very important family time. 

We were lucky enough to be invited to a friend’s house in Carmel, Indiana. Day one we spent at her aunt’s house, where 20 guests enjoyed a turkey dinner. Day two we spent at the host’s house, where 35 guests enjoyed a turkey dinner. Each time, before dinner, we all gathered together, grace was said, and people were invited to share what they were giving thanks for. It was nice to see families joining together like this, even if we’re not religious. Then after the meal people would get out their guitars and start a sing song. I think what it mainly highlighted to me, is that we are very formal in the UK. I can’t imagine having 35 guests for dinner on such as casual basis, but everyone brought a dish, we used paper plates so there was little washing up, and the point was really about sharing time in the same place.

Now on to Christmas.

Some other observations. This one is so big, huge in fact, that I might have mentioned it before. American’s like things to be large in every way. Cars, the amount of food on your plate, leading up to the size of their clothes, room dimensions, cups which hold enough coffee to fill a bath, beds, televisions, furniture in general, the list can go on. I have a theory that this attraction, magnetism to the grander scale, has something to do with the size of the country. I’ve noted before how I don’t like the Illinois countryside. But we’re currently in the Utah desert, and it’s fantastic – and huge. Massive rock walls, impossibly balanced stacks of rocks as red as crimson, under a sky so infinitely, well, big (I’m running out of large scale adjectives here). I love it – the shapes and colours, the promise of exciting explorations, hiking, mountain biking, wholesome outdoor life (I may be confusing what I want to do with what we are able to do with a four year old and a two year old).

Use your mind’s eye to imagine settlers arriving here for the first time. Coming from crowded cities on the East coast or Europe, space must have seemed vast. And so everything grew bigger to ensure proportion. Big houses, because land wasn’t an issue, needs big furniture, which needs big plates to fill it, and big meals. Roads are wide, so cars are bigger. We’ve just been to Las Vegas where an advert on the side of a van said it all. Elvis, in all his glittery Vegas glory, was asking you: “Why walk when you can hire a scooter?” The word “obese” has been redefined here. I’ve never seen so many people that I would be scared to bump into in case I never see the light of day again.

Vegas was an education into all that is glutinous. I don’t like the gambling culture to start with so I was never going to be in my element, but it was a culture shock. In the middle of the desert, there are huge pyramids, rollercoasters on the main street through the city, gold lions the size of a building, a fairy castle, dancing girls, stage shows. Everything is plastic, loud, gaudy, glittering. It’s toy town and the only rule is you must have fun. It’s a strange place to be, especially with children. We were staying at the Four Season Hotel, which given the other hotels we visited, was an oasis. It wasn’t tacky. It wasn’t noisy. There were fewer tattooed, surgically enhanced people. It was an interesting contrast after the natural rural life we had been living for the past two weeks, where we hiked the national parks of the Grand Canyon, Arches, Canyonland, Natural Bridges, and my favourite, the pink sandstones of Antelope Canyon, just outside the town of Page. 

We had fun, but now I’m sitting in the safety of the airport, on our way to San Diego, I think three nights in Vegas was just about right. We could have done more, and that leads me to another rant. As soon as you have children, who absorb all the spare cash you have, why does everyone hike up the prices? It’s more expensive to travel during school holidays, you have to pay for more seats on planes, more food, more beds. I can see that. But if you want to have a break from sitting in your dark hotel room, waiting for the children to go to sleep, you need a new mortgage. You might think getting a babysitter isn’t a big deal. It’s expensive, but a treat, and where else to have a treat but Vegas? I don’t mind spending $50 to someone I know and trust to look after my precious girls. But I do mind spending $180 ($45 per hour for a minimum of four hours if you please) to a stranger at a babysitting service promoted by the hotel. And then there are the show tickets on top of that. Surely shows could do family deals to get bums on seats, offer babysitting coupons on the quiet days? Do they want me to write their business plan for them?

So today I’m writing to you from San Diego, in the dark. For all America’s excesses, we are three hours into a power cut. There is no light to see, no electricity to cook, and no Wi-Fi to surf. But there is a kind of Dunkirk spirit to be fair. I haven’t heard anyone complain. We were in the Old Town when it happened and luckily managed to find a mediocre restaurant that was not shutting its doors in the face of this adversity. So we’ve been fed, watered with margaritas and are now wondering what to do. I’ve downloaded Disney’s Princess and the Frog on to my laptop for the girls but it hasn’t yet come to that. 

Our worst powercut was during the Chicago blizzard last February, when people panic-bought bread and milk. Despite four feet of snow we had been dug out of our home by our friendly snow removal company by three in the afternoon. The power, however, was off for 14 hours, which meant all the food had to pass the sniff test before being consumed, and we were about to have to deploy the sniff test on each other too – we have well water so rely on electricity to pump it. So no showers. How could we have survived?! (Actually, I was more worried about what we were going to drink, but we had a frozen lake at the bottom of the garden as a last resort! And lots of snow.)

San Diego is an interesting place. It’s sort of American but really Californian. The Californians are half tribal/Mexican, half Spanish, and the place definitely has a different style. We visited the Old Town today, which is more of a monument to the past with tourist stalls selling “antique” pottery and ponchos. It’s based around the original town square of the first settlement here and dates back to the 1820s in spirit, but not quite in reality. It looks impressive and authentic and, for a moment, I thought my historic needs could be satiated. But not quite. It is mostly rebuilt and remodeled and signs discreetly tell you about the history of how it was, rather than how it is. Still at least I had the chance to peak into the past. It’s so close to living memory it’s almost tangible. But to Americans it’s something they can’t get their head around. And why should they? Just 190 years ago there was nothing here. Not even trees. The Kumeyaay had moved along the river’s edge for centuries, upping sticks when natural resources ran out, only returning when the flora had grown back. Then the Spanish staked its claim at the end of the 18th century, and then it was Mexico’s turn to look after the city after its independence from Spain in 1821. Finally the area fell into American hands in 1846 when the United States declared war on Mexico. The gold rush of 1850s sucked people in from all over the country, chancing their luck; the Vegas of the 19th century. But it was still a small town.

Today, San Diego is sprawling. It’s doesn’t have to huge city towers of many American cities, but the Spanish villas cover a large area of the coastal lands. It’s pretty, it’s vibrant and all of a sudden trees have popped up all over the place.

It’s very dark now, and the power still has not been restored. I can see one bonfire and the headlights of a few cars. But I think I might retire for the night before something unseen decides to take a bath in my wine. Fingers crossed we don’t have to deploy to sniff test tomorrow morning. The darkness seems an apt place to close this American chapter. The bright light of the morning will have Arabian promise.

So what will we miss from our stay in the States?

The space. 

1. Car parks: You really can’t beat it. I can park in any car park and know that I can get both girls in and out of the car without a problem. I remember, we I was eight months pregnant, pushing a toddler in a buggy, walking back to my car in a British car park and finding someone had parked with little thought or consideration on both sides. What would you like me to do? Climb through the boot? Leave my toddler in the car park while I reversed? Cue hot tears of frustration. In America, you can even drive into the city centre and park more cheaply than getting the train as a family. 

2. My mansion is my castle: The house is large and roomy. We have plenty of storage space. We have a back garden the size of football pitch. We can usually get the buggy into a restaurant or shop without people tutting and sighing at our audacity. We can usually get a table at a restaurant.

3. The people: We have made some good friends. People are welcoming, friendly, positive and polite. They will strike up conversations in a queue, sorry, line. They are interested in your accent, your travel experience, the fact that you’ve chosen to live in their hometown. 

4. The positivity: Attitude isn’t a dirty word here because generally the attitude is positive. Children want to do well at school. And positivity breeds positivity.

What will I be glad to leave behind?

1. The space: We’re currently travelling through Utah and Arizona. We landed in Salt Lake City and plan to be spat out in Las Vegas. I’m prepared to have my eyes opened by this country. I expect, and hope, to see amazingly wild geographical sights, impossible for man to replicate. I want to understand why man moved to a desert. I don’t want to see miles and miles and miles of flat nothingness. I don’t want to set eyes on anything as horizontal as Illinois. 

Don’t get me wrong. The city is fun and vibrant. Architecturally it probably can’t be rivaled in the entire United States. And the bizarreness of Vegas does not count. (By the way, if you want to see the Eiffel Tower, go there. Is life about ticking off a list of places visited or understanding why things are as they are in the first place? Country bagging or cultural enlightenment? I suppose Vegas will reveal it’s culture in a way, but it may not be one than endears me to the struggle of humankind. Persecuted Mormons moved west and struggling ninetieth century Englishmen braved rough seas and the unknown, for what? A casino and a fake pyramid. I’ll try and reserve judgment, but as you can see I’m not very good at that. I’m just going there to check these prejudices are true. It’s a research trip really.) 

So yes, back to the point, Chicago, a real city, is interesting and has historical context. But the suburbs? Well, on this trip I don’t want to feel the agoraphobia of suburban Chicagoland. That’s the space I’m happy to leave behind.

2. The people: As I’ve said, we’ve made some great friends. But it’s been slow progress. Despite the rumours, people don’t visit new neighbours with tray bakes and a welcome card. In our subdivision (estate), they gossip about how much someone has paid for their house, or whether they have a full-scale bowling alley in their basement (did I mention how spacious the basement is?) People in the suburbs are all mainly homebods. They have been brought up here. They have their friends, their safe and familiar routines. We are really interrupting this and we are transient. Send invites out to a party and even if it’s your 30th (a friend’s) or a leaving do (ours) people will sound excited and then either; a) ignore your invite, b) say they will come but not show up, c) say they will come but give a last minute excuse so ridiculous your four year old could sound more plausible when asked why she is smearing the breakfast table with butter. Really this is a selfish society. 

Another example of selfishness is the local driving habits. The onus is on you to get out of someone’s way if they are changing lanes, not for them to wait for a clear space longer than a matchbox. If someone asks you over for a playdate, it’s not your scintillating conversation that interests them, but rather the fact you have children of the same ages and will keep their darling offspring occupied for a while. It’s confusing when the signals are so positive. And I’m not sure we’ve really broken the code.

In four weeks time we are due to board a plane taking us East. I said I didn’t like the cold winters and Andy has obviously taken my dislike for extreme hatred and arranged for us to live in Dubai. Not sure I can complain about -25C there.

So another adventure is on the horizon, but first I need to reflect and make some parting observations of our American life.

The topic of weather is usually a good and very British place to start.

It’s true we did have a very long, and cold, winter. October felt almost British with its fresh cool air. The air conditioning was a distant memory and within a week the heating was warming our toes. Friends had told us that Chicago starts to batten down the hatches for winter on Labor Day at the beginning of September. August had been very hot and we thought it was premature. Perhaps it was our fault that the weather changed overnight – we did go camping after all – the rains fell down and the jumpers were pulled out of the cupboard. 

Talking of getting in the spirit of things, people do like to celebrate everything here. Corpses were hung from trees, bones were shoved into the ground (not yet frozen) to resemble disturbed graves, huge inflatable skulls adorned street corners. And I’m not really sure what we were supposed to be celebrating. Death? Being alive? All a bit strange if you ask me.

Before Hallowe’en there is autumn, or fall, to celebrate. Hurrah, the hot weather is over and we’re now in fear of frostbite. Does no-one remember how horrible it was last year? So autumnal wreaths are hung on doors, sheaths of corn are tied to mailboxes, dried corncobs are dangled from eaves. No harvest festivals though, so not a celebration of Earth’s fruits.

After Hallowe’en you can decorate your house for thanksgiving, generally turkey-based paraphernalia. This is the biggest festival in the calendar and very much focusing on food. 

Of course there are the baubles, lights and tinsel of Christmas and New Year, and then everything is strangely quiet. Having been mildly distracted by the pretty lights I begin to feel relieved that I didn’t have to keep up with the neighbours’ decorating competition. We don’t have all the gubbins and stuff required to turn our home into a gingerbread house. Of course, people have massive basements here so storage is not a problem. 

January, February and March were very dark months. I thought spring would be around the corner and I could attempt to decorate the house with flowers. Strangely enough they don’t seem to celebrate that, but St Valentines is a big deal. All the children send little cards and sweets to each other. It’s more about appreciating friendship than a romantic display, and that’s an idea to be lauded. Could do without the sweet giving though. I’m writing this in August and I still haven’t let the girls eat last year’s stash of Hallowe’en candy yet! 

Spring didn’t come at the end of March. Or April. At the end of May, my brother and his girlfriend came to visit and we had tickets for a Cub’s game at Wrigley Field. I had three coats on that night and was still so cold we abandoned the game after the seventh inning and retreated to the warmth of a pub. The month was so wet. Grey curtains of water were a frequent sight. Even in June I was still waiting for Spring but finally came to the conclusion that we had missed it. Mam and Dad came to visit and the weather was a little unpredictable. Some nice days, some cold days, some wet days and a few hot days. Generally, summers are too hot and humid to spend any time outside and after dark you get eaten alive by mosquitos the size of small birds. Winters are brutally cold, so you risk getting frostbite before you’ve managed to get the children out of the car, but it’s generally dry. Sledging, or to use to local term, sledding, is fun if you can find a day not too cold, but don’t try and make a snowman, because you need English snow, which is wet and slushy.

Size is apparently what matters here. Everything is very big. Of course the obvious reason is the amount of space available. It’s like when you buy a bigger house and you don’t have enough furniture, but when you move to an even bigger house, your original house is full of stuff. That’s America. It just keeps expanding in every way to fill the available size. Here are some examples:

Houses are bigger. We are renting a house that has three garages. We don’t have three cars. The garage itself is as big as a modest UK house. We have three bedrooms (plus an upstairs living room), but a basement we could rent to a couple of families.

The garden is huge. The village, and I use that term loosely, of Long Grove has a rule that all houses must have at least an acre of land. We don’t use the football pitch behind our house, and no-one else seems to either. They just mow it. Or more correctly, they pay Mexicans to mow it. Americans have a fixation with neatness and germs, almost to Aryan proportions, which makes sense, given that most immigrants to this area were German or Irish. Interesting clash of cultures. But both beer swilling. Ironically, there are few bars here.

Cars are also massive. My theory on this is not that people actually need big cars (although there are some who could benefit from an appointment with the gym), but they need to be in proportion to their surroundings. The roads are wide, because there is no reason for them not to be. Trucks, sorry, lorries, are the size of sea-faring oil tankers. In order to protect themselves, drivers choose bigger and bigger cars.

A plate of food in a restaurant could feed a European family. People are big. They are taller, and wider. They have bigger teeth. They have bigger voices. Everything seems to be magnified. Groceries are actually quite expensive here, so it is a little surprising that people spend so much money on food, but I suppose once you have an appetite, and food manufacturers have you hooked into an addiction fuelled by fats and salt, you’re willing to pay for satisfaction. Food rules aren’t as strict here. There are more hormones. And when a concerned, and sensible group of people, tried to limit the amount of salt in food there was uproar. Apparently that’s against American human rights. It’s too much of an effort to lift the salt seller and add it yourself, so we all have to eat it. Thanks.

And then there is surprising stuff that’s large. Flowers. The hibiscus here is the size of a dinner plate. 

The weather has been particularly weird recently. Some days it seems even more British than Britain with four seasons in one day. Today it started sunny, then by 9am there were thunderstorms and rivers of rain running down the roads. At 11am the ground was completely dry and the sun was out. The afternoon was cloudy and very humid. The thunderstorms are pretty spectacular, with real force. The storm last Friday was so bad they shut the airport (so Andy didn’t get home from Orlando until 3am) and the build up of pressure in our roof space meant the attic hatch was sucked off. When I first saw it I thought someone had been living in the loft like a stowaway.

Usually the rain is so heavy that it’s practically impossible to go out. Today we managed to get a dry window and went to the playground with the Lake Zurich Moms and Tots group. It was good fun as there was a better turn-out than other events, but the playground was very muddy. Madeleine and I had to wash our feet in a bucket of water when we came home.

The girls have changed quite a bit in the last couple of days. Tilda is cruising and almost standing on her own. She’s becoming defiant in her own way and doesn’t like to be told “no” when pulling at cables and leads by the computer. Madeleine’s accent is half way across the Atlantic. Her pronunciation of the letter “r” is more American than English and she uses American words. She even asked me to put something in the “garbage” the other day. I’m trying to make her speak English at home, but she does have to fit in here. At the playground the other day, a mother asked me if I was British as she thought Madeleine had an American accent and she wasn’t sure.

We getting to know quite a few people, but it’s all rather superficial at the moment. People don’t seem to just “do coffee” here. It’s about doing something to entertain the children. One thing I have noticed is that life at home in the UK is about building for the future. You invest time in your family and friends and create a long-term support network around you. You spend time improving your house or garden. Life here can feel a little temporary. I’m not used to just having fun without feeling guilty (how boring do I sound?). I’m used to ticking off lists, working towards a challenge and moving towards a useful goal. I’m happy to change my attitude and perception of the meaning of life, but life in the suburbs can be a little dull without friends. It’s only a matter of time, and we’ve met some nice people. It’s just an effort to make the invitations and be the organiser all the time.

One thing we did enjoy this weekend was getting both girls on the back of our bikes. Tilda seems to enjoy the experience although she is less convinced about wearing a helmet. She hates her sun hat so I’m not surprised. We cycled from the house into Long Grove. It was lovely to get out and about, although I hadn’t appreciated how heavy the bike becomes with a little parcel on the back. You only need to do a couple of miles for a good workout!

Living in America
“Two countries separated by a common language.” Was George Bernard Shaw right? I think it's true. Living in America, we are in effect learning a new language and even if the words are the same, the pronunciation is different. We say shopping trolley, they say shopping cart. We say lever (lee-ver), they say lever (erm, lev-er), but from the sound of it you would never know the word was the same. I hate to say it but the American pronunciation is more phonetic and therefore easier to read. Madeleine, our four-year-old, is more adaptable than us and takes it all in her stride. She is even correcting what I say when we go out, but if she tells me Tilda needs her diaper changing one more time... 

So I am now going to the grocery store (supermarket) to find a cart (shopping trolley) and I will buy some eggplant (aubergine) and zucchini (courgette). I'm by no means a forensic linguist, but I do have a theory on how the language has taken different paths. When the founding fathers boarded the Mayflower in the 17th century, French was the official language of the English courts. Those souls who fled the homeland, however, were not from the the upper classes where French was de rigueur. So plain old common English was exported with them.

The English have always had a tendency to look up the class ladder, and in an aspirational way, have copied their feudal masters, dragging French words into everyday parlance. But please don't offer me a napkin to wipe the corner of my mouth at the dinner table. It conjures up images of dirty nappies, nappy being a shortened form of napkin (or could it be that it comes from the word "nap", meaning the hairy side of a fabric cause by short fibres?). In any case I'd rather have a serviette please and stay aspirational.

Talking of those in nappies, Tilda is growing up so fast. I’ve decided that given the increasing number of teeth, and associated biting incidents, that the feeding now has to stop. She is crawling on all fours, instead of commando crawling and can pull herself up to standing. The baths here are half the depth of ours, which makes it easier to get the children out, but also means she can practically get into the bath on her own.

Her bottom two teeth arrived on the same day, and a couple of weeks ago she got her top two teeth through on the same day. She had been very grouchy, with a cold and a cough too. I took her to the paediatrician (the children see paediatrians – spelt pediatrician- rather than doctors here) and found out she has an ear infection. She has been given an antibiotic called Amoxicillin, which I keep hearing as “epoxy resin”. Just as long as I give her the right one!

We’ve met our neighbours, having hosted a drinks party. They seem very nice but we are the youngest by quite a long chalk. The area is great, and each house has a massive plot of land, but the main problem is that it can be quite isolating. The Chicago suburban plains stretch on and on. We can’t walk anywhere from the house and that means that you are always taking the children in and out of the car to drive them somewhere to be entertained. Life can be very easy as there is lots to do, but I would like the children to be able to entertain themselves rather than expecting things to happen for them.

Madeleine is starting to settle in well at nursery. She has lots of friends and is kept very busy for the two days a week that she goes. The day is structured with circle time, individual time and play time so there is a balance between learning through play and just playing. Biased as a mother is, I can say she is very bright, and shocks me with some of the observations she makes and the knowledge she has. There is some benefit to the constant question “why?”, even if she is driving me crazy.