Customs & immigration

Be prepared for cross-referenced questions and mandatory fingerprinting to make you feel like a replicant even though you’ve done nothing wrong and your eyes don’t glow in the dark. The gatekeepers at immigration are all-powerful and take their job seriously so you should too as I found out when I had a case of the giggles.

Some countries need a Visa to visit and while the UK (and Guernsey) doesn’t if you’re coming not to visit but to work you’ll require a work visa. Mine took a mountain of paperwork and a lot of work (for Microsoft) to get an all-important H1-B which means you have “mad skills we need”. The application is filed before April 1st and if there aren’t too many applications that year (there is a limit) and everything is ok you start work on October 1st for 3-years (extendable to 6).

Once approved you get an I-95 card stamped into your passport. You turn this in when you fly out of the country but if you’re driving up to Canada and coming back soon they may let you keep it. Scan it after you arrive and don’t lose it as it takes over 3 months to get a replacement and they’ll need the number as they can’t look up.

The TSA

The Transport Service Authority are the guys and gals tasked with keeping air travel safe.

Taking off shoes is compulsory because somebody hid a bomb in a shoe. Liquids are only allowed in tiny quantities because somebody planned a liquid bomb and many airports want to bombard you with x-rays or technologies to peek beneath your clothes because somebody blew up his underwear.

The Americans are pushing back against this last-threat-chasing approach and loss of dignity but Congress have no idea what it’s like as they fly private charter flights. For now you can at opt-out of the potentially dangerous x-ray and backscatter machines.

Airports

US airports are much like everywhere – full of shops and restaurants for you to roam while you wait – but feel less crammed than Heathrow or Gatwick (with the exception of JFK).

Seattle’s main airport (SeaTac) has free WiFi which is unusual but welcome – it has that in common with Guernsey’s airport.

Rail

Trains in the US were a casualty in the love affair with cars. The routes and timetables are limited with high fares high and long journey times. The lack of investment is quite apparent and a real shame as it’s hard to watch the beautiful country and road at the same time.

Esteemed entrepreneur and philanthropist Warren Buffet is pouring money into rail – whether this is an investment or a charitable donation time will tell.

Bus

Busses are regular and punctual in Seattle and some offer free WiFi. The reserved lanes let them blast past the traffic at busy times and even the rnon-Express routes can be quicker than driving at peak times.

The time-table at each stop lists not when the bus will arrive but when it starts the route from somewhere else which save printing a time-table for each stop but also renders it useless. Fire up your mobile device with an app or Google Maps although the latter throws curveballs (and not just for buses). I wondered if was a ploy to disrupt the Microsofties but a visit to San Francisco showed it just as confused in their own backyard.

Anyone hoping to catch a bus in downtown Seattle should be aware that many routes downtown are inside a large underground tunnel beneath the roads and the entrances are not clearly visible.

Roads

Do people drive SUVs because of the potholes or do they cause them?

The naming and numbering system is simple and the biggest begin with I for interstate because they span more than one state. In Seattle this includes the I-5 which starts at Mexico, comes up through California and Oregon and right through Seattle before turning into the BC99 at the Canadian border and on towards Vancouver. We also have the I-405 which runs parallel to the I-5 but only from Seattle to California and the I-90 (not to be confused with the immigration form of the same name) which starts in Seattle and spans across to Boston on the east coast. Interstates are like English motorways and there is nothing like them Guernsey.

Highways are smaller and get just a number. The most popular here are the 405 that runs north-south parallel with the I-5 for a while but on the east-side and the 520 east-west between downtown Seattle and Redmond via Microsoft HQ which runs almost parallel with the I-90. Both the 520 and the I-90 cross Lake Washington which sits beautifully, if a little inconveniently, between downtown Seattle and “Eastside” where everything else exists. They are comparable with dual-carriage ways and there is nothing like them in Guernsey… well, maybe the 50 meters leading up to the town roundabout.

Traffic

The speed limit in Guernsey is 35mph so getting comfortable with 60mph can take months. I’m never sure it will feel completely natural but there’s nothing wrong with being alert and edgy on these roads.

Driving at 60mph means I want to leave the proper distance between myself and the car in front. Unfortunately that space will immediately be filled by three cars and a semi-articulated truck. There is no sweet spot where you get good stopping distance nobody will fill.

Be aware that people drive with little concern for their own safety let alone yours.

Lights

Many towns and cities are laid out on a grid and almost every intersection has traffic lights.  I wondered why so many sit on highway traffic jams when smaller roads exist and now I know it is impossible to keep momentum through the grid.

You do get to turn right at red lights after stopping and yielding though – unless a sign says otherwise.

Everyone here goes through on orange and call it ’squeezing the orange’. Don’t squeeze too hard though or it’ll be red and you’ll find a souvenir to capture the moment for prosperity arriving in the mail and a bill for $70.

License

Get a license as soon as you arrive even if you don’t intend to drive. Rental companies are confused by a Guernsey driving license, bars only accept passports and US drivers licenses and insurance takes how long you’ve had a US license into consideration. Domestic flights require government ID and carrying your passport everywhere is a liability given how hard it is to replace your passport, I-94 and visa. Trust me on that.

The test is easy. Sit down in front of a PC for traffic rules and regulations (most of which are like the UK except regarding school buses.

The DMV is efficient once you get to the front but getting there can run to hours so Go to their web site, find all the offices and keep an eye on wait times for a few days to spot a good time and location. If you can’t find one go and pick up your number, subtract 15 minutes from the wait time and then go and have lunch, meet friends, start a family and then come back and take your turn. In my case it was 2 hours better spent elsewhere.

Insurance

Is going to be expensive at first – your maximum no-claims-bonus isn’t going to help so get that license early.

With more people comes more danger and add in crazy hospital costs and litigation the policies will need high limits and people should be careful on the roads. They’re not in both cases.

Accidents

Accidents are common and we sat in traffic for over 45 minutes while somebody had a Carbeque (car on fire).

As a pedestrian I’ve been almost hit 3 times. Some factors I suspect are:

• Rear windshield (windscreen) wipers are rare – drivers never look behind
• Orange turn signals (indicators) are often absent – a flashing red brake light is much less obvious
• Automatic and cruise controls exist – concentrate on anything but driving
• SUVs, minivans and trucks obscure the visibility of all around them – and give a false sense of saftey
• Drink driving is less strict – many will happily drive after a few
• Lack of spacial awareness – also a problem in supermarkets with carts (trolleys)

Automatic vs manual

Driving on the ‘right’ side of the road isn’t difficult. The steering wheel can still opposite the curb so all is well unless you drive an import (don’t) and it is easy for the entire left-side of your body to fall asleep with nothing to do. The hard part is remembering to look left first then right when arriving at a junction.

All rentals are automatic.

If you do buy a manual (or stick as they like to call it) then choice disappears quickly, fuel economy improves and resale gets harder. We went with a Subaru Impreza for AWD winter ski trips and a hatchback for transporting stuff. You’d be shocked at how few models support manual AWD hatchbacks that aren’t an SUV here.

Don’t let this put you off, it’s a great place to live, work or just visit… but bring a raincoat.

[)amien

I will also be spending an extra day and a half in Seattle, perhaps taking in some of the sights of and maybe meeting up with a couple of on-line contacts for the first time.

Flights & hotel booked, now where I did put my passport…

The event was a Software Design Review for Microsoft’s ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions including MVC. Twenty-four of us gave our thoughts, feelings and opinions to the teams on how we believe we would or could utilise various aspects.

[)amien

1. Commercial airlines take the fun out of flying. Airports are often overcrowded and always have so much ‘dead-time’ waiting for check-in, security, boarding, take-off, baggage claim, customs…
2. Heathrow is horrific and I’m glad Guernsey doesn’t fly there any more.
3. When UK customs say one piece of hand-luggage per person they mean it. Handbag and laptops are a piece and taking liquid or gels is still a pain.
4. It takes around 1h 20mins to transfer between Heathrow and Gatwick by coach.
5. Seoul’s airport is impressive even under construction – shame about the one-hour delays on the runway.
6. Korean Air’s fleet delivers interactive individual LCD screens with seat-to-seat gaming or ancient dodgy CRT projectors depending on the luck of the draw.

Trains

1. The JR Rail Pass offers massive savings for those wishing to get around. As well as Shinkansen bullet-trains between major cities you can take slower trains between towns and JR lines inside cities.
2. Show your JR Pass and ticket at gates instead of putting your ticket in the machine. Otherwise be prepared for a polite yet firm official to tap you on the shoulder.
3. JR Pass doesn’t let you get on the Nozomi Shinkansen. The quickest you can ride is the Hikori which is the same speed but has more frequent stops often.

Subway

1. Tokyo subway is quite easy to navigate despite the sheer size and number of people thanks to near-complete Romaji maps.
2. Kyoto subway is a bit of a mess thanks to multiple operators and no unified map.
3. Fukuoka’s subway is fast, clean and easy to navigate… it is also new.
4. Buy a credit ticket that will be deducted per trip. It saves a whole lot of time messing around with machines and costs and lets you get on the last few trains when the ticket machines have closed.

Technology

1. All Internet cafes should consist of cubicles you can sleep in with TV, workstation, bean-bag, unlimited soft drinks and a free comic library like Gera Gera.
2. Mobile phones are everywhere with people texting and gaming in the street, on trains etc.
3. Mobile phone system is UTMS/3G so a GSM-only phone won’t work. You’ll also need to make sure your operator has a roaming partner in Japan because you can’t buy pay-as-you-go SIM’s in Japan unless you’re a resident.

People

1. Japanese people are incredibly polite and helpful whether it’s a stranger sharing her umbrella at a road junction, somebody helping you pick up the contents of your bag sprawled across the floor or somebody from a shop coming outside to help you get your map the right way up and point you in the right direction.
2. Tiny Police stations (boxes) scatter Tokyo and are equipped with maps to help lost people – addresses are hard to find without one. Check the web-site for where you’re going and you’ll probably find a printable map.
3. Emotion is all about the eyes and not the mouth in Japan. It’s not just anime but even emoticons are eyes-only. A sad mouthed-face here is tearful eyes!

Food

1. The street-tent Japanese eateries are a great place to meet people as locals of all ages and foriegners get chatting.
2. Cheese, milk and chocolate are not common. Kit-Kat and Snickers are about the only recognisable brand chocolate bars.
3. Eggs turn up in many many dishes. Boiled and dropped into soups, or cooked and laid upon practically anything or sometimes raw over rice dishes.
4. Food is beautifully prepared, even supermarket sandwiches and lunch-boxes. Crusts are too ugly for their sandwiches.

[)amien

Got into Fukuoka and spent a few days exploring and a few evenings being entertained by Jo who also gave me some pointers on Japanese culture etc. I also subjected his friend Hitori ? to my incredibly poor attempts at Karaoke although my rendition of Franz Ferdinand’s Take Me Home almost veered onto the side of not quite making ears bleed.

We ate the fabled delicacy Ramen – noodles in a meat soup – and visited a cool local bar as well as trying out a DVD of some Japanese comedy set in a hotel that was rather good – plenty of set-up and bringing the various elements together for the final wrap up.

After a few days I took a train down to Nagasaki which was hit by the second atomic bomb during World War II just a few days after Hiroshima. Went to the monuments and peace garden there – it’s a stark reminder of too much power too little responsibility.

Then decided to head all the way up to Tokyo on the Shrinkansen bullet train and have spent a few days in a haze of neon.

I’ve visited shrines, temples, gardens, parks, stores, markets but far too many subway stations and their rather long connection walks (about 0.5km much of the time).

I feel like I’ve walked to the ends of the earth between that and all the walking around parks, shops, streets etc.

I also visited a geek paradise known as GoraGora – you get a small cubicle with a sliding closing door, padded floor, bean-bag, pillow, PC with net access and games pre-installed, TV, lamp and somewhere to put your shoes. Nearby is the free soda machine, showers and comic library (Japanese only – doh!). You can also have food delivered to your cubicle – all for the price of 980 JPY for 3 hours (about £5 GBP or $9 USD).

Hit the Sony Building which Jo’s generally-good TimeOut guide to Tokyo claims has a whole floor of PlayStation gear and games. It no longer has any such thing and indeed I couldn’t find a single PlayStation 3 in the building although I did see a Wii and the associated bits in a store but it should be out in the UK by now.

Tomorrow I’ll be taking another fast train down to Kyoto for a couple of days to get some more Japanese gardens and wild-life done. I think I’ve reached my shopping and bright lights limit – apparently Tokyo is one of the two biggest cities in the world depending on how you measure it (tied with Mexico City).

Everybody I’ve met is incredibly nice and polite – I’ve had Japanese people running out of their stores/hotels to help me when I spend more than a few minutes outside staring at my map and a kind lady in Nagasaki held her umbrella above my head for me. Which reminds me – I’ve left my newly purchased umbrella in the last hotel.

[)amien

With my project reaching a milestone this week it seems like the perfect time to take a well deserved holiday. Clarissa can’t get the time off and isn’t too interested in Japan so I’m holidaying solo again (first time since Vancouver/BC in 2004).

The good news, for me at least, is that Matt’s brother Jo is living and working in Fukuoka and so hopefully he’ll help me find my feet for a day or two when I get there. We might even check out the ski/board conditions and head up there so I’m packing my ski-trousers – I’ll be wearing my jacket during the day as it’s quite cold this time of year.

There are so many things to see and do that I’m going to grab a £120 7-day Japan Rail pass which I have to purchase before I enter the country as it’s not available to Japanese residents.

Matt also helpfully pointed me at Japan-Guide which has lots of information but tomorrow I’ll head into town and pickup something I can put in my pocket. I’m not sure what net access I’ll have out there – my Tytn smart-phone will work apparently but C&W Guernsey have no roaming partners!

I can’t wait!

[)amien

The indoor carting was quite cool fun although as usual the carts felt too slow and the indoor surface meant sliding on every corner regardless of slowing down so no attempt at fine tuning those race lines to the edge of your tyres. Well, maybe there was, but I wasn’t slowing down enough to find it.

Clay pigeon shooting was fantastic. It’s the first time in my life I’ve fire a real gun and this was a double-barrelled Baretta shotgun. I did pretty well and came third in our group behind a friend who used to play for Guernsey and another friends father who’d done it a long time ago. I even beat the whole team on one set that involved overhead clay pigeons although the debris did manage to fall down and hit my in the small of the back.

The comedy club was quite good although there was a fair amount of heckling at the start from a small group. The compère went to great lengths to try and shut them up with a variety of put downs but in the end had to have them removed. The New Zealand guy was pretty fast ‘n humorous but then pick on some guy who’s girl went and sat next to another guy to the point where the woman ended up walking out and the guy stood up and told him to get on with his act and stop picking on them before running out after his girlfriend.

Oops.

Our table was absolutely covered in bottles of beer us having ordered ice buckets of 5 bottles of beers each – not actually that much all considered but it did look a LOT and put it in some kind of perspective.

The second guy on was much slower and less in your face being a bit of a stoner with a crazy shirt.

At this point my headache from earlier in the evening kicked into overdrive and having made my apologies to the groom-to-be I ambled back to the hotel along the streets of Southampton. My brain had helpfully made some sort of semi-concious route and I found myself back at our Ibis by 10pm.

There the headache took full force and the fact our Window wouldn’t close properly became a problem with my headache and the noise outside. My room-mate Glyn was quite patient with my as a ran a wet towel and placed it on my head. The Ibis guy, who was possibly Dutch but definitely weird came up and failed to fix our Window with his miniature set of tools.

Thankfully I found my sponge earplugs in my pockets from that days shooting and plugged them into my ears for a reasonable nights sleep.

Sunday was paintball day and we set off on a McDonald’s breakfast (we tried to find other places serving hot food but were running out of time).

I managed quite well not getting shot until about the 4th game where I got a hand-splat to my glove. The enemy team were cheating a bit at this point and we had to start getting marshals to go over and point out to them that yes, they were covered in paint and should report to the dead zone.

I eventually got shot on my head which although hurt like crazy for a few seconds soon went down and hasn’t left a bump.

Unfortunately in the last game, a free-for-all, some European girl decided to shoot my bottom from quite close range as I ran through the undergrowth and so I took a big bruise. I always seem to get one at paintball but I thought I’d managed to avoid it until then.

All in all a very good weekend and apart from antlers and pink hair the stag got off quite lightly especially compared to my brother-in-law’s one in Prague.

Tired now, good-night!

[)amien

It is a little disappointing that to book two different flights that you have to book each one separately despite obviously being possible on the phone or with non-airline sites such as Amazon. To avoid booking one and finding the other not available and being left with useless tickets we decided to book each using a different computer so that we could try and make sure it went through at the same time.

Our first issue was that once you have chosen your flights there is no indication of the dates again until the payment has been processed. Other sites seem to have no problem displaying a "current itinerary" down the side at every stage yet with yours this place is instead full of such great things as "You saved £10 booking online!" in giant text and other less important details than a reminder/confirmation of what I have chosen thus far.

The next page, that of your details, then completely omits GUERNSEY as a country forcing us to choose UNITED KINGDOM. For a business that used to be called Jersey European it seems you have forgotten that the Channel Islands are not and have never been part of the UK. Would it be that hard to get it right? After all you’ve even got VATICAN CITY listed although I doubt you get many bookings from it’s residents.

The next part automatically includes travel insurance – which is of course completely unnecessary if you are booking on credit cards or have a travel policy but it there it is and switched on as default. This adds to the whole spiraling-supplements experience that seems to be FlyBe.

Also here is a "I’m a UK resident" check-box. What do I select being from Guernsey? Do I tell the truth and uncheck it or leave it checked as you forced me to choose UNITED KINGDOM as my country?

An option here lets me choose my seat for an extra £5.00. There is no indication of course that it is £5.00 PER PART not per booking so for return trip will be an extra £10. The conditions also make it clear that you can renegade without refund on this arrangement if you feel it’s not safe or that you didn’t make it to the front of the queue within the allocated check-in time.

We struggled through and elected to pay the £2.50 per-person-per-leg-per-hold-item charge. If there’s one thing that’s really annoying about commercial flights it’s the time it takes to get into your seat while people try to stuff over-sized items in their overhead lockers, other people’s overhead lockers then under the seat in front of them. With a supplement on hold baggage I can only assume it’s going to get worse.

Finally, the payment screen and one that seems okay apart from the fact that you’re about to pay for something you can’t get a refund on and there is no final confirmation as to what it is you are buying in contrast to every other e-commerce site I have ever used.

In order to ensure we both got our flights we clicked okay at the same time.

One completed, the other came back with a card error despite the details were okay. I can only assume your system was not happy about processing two different transactions with the same credit card details.

Hitting "retry" to return us to the previous payment screen led us to a page saying our booking was now invalid as that level of seat had gone and now only more expensive ones were available.

Joy, we get to do it all over again for one of our tickets.

Luckily for us we managed to get the second booking through, albeit at a more expensive price.

Using your site is like playing Russian roulette.

[)amien

Jackson is a rather small cowboy style town that apparently is even busier in the summer than the winter. Everybody in town is very friendly and helpful apart from the miserable bar staff in the Cowboy Village who could barely be arsed to tell us what they had available to drink. We spent more time at a bar called Sidewinders which is a sports bar with far too many televisions and watched American "Football".

The people at our hotel, The Ranch Inn, were incredibly helpful and also had a free open WiFi hotspot which my laptop made it’s new best friend.

Either Jackson has a problem with under-age drinking or they are a little paranoid about it. I was ID’ed in a bar (okay), a liquor store (not buying anything just with somebody who was) and when ordering a pint of pale ale with my meal in a restaurant. It’s kind of strange how they are so strict on alcohol yet we went to watch Underworld 2 at the cinema and some 10 year old child sat through the whole gorefest.

Jackson Hole (Teton Village)

We were a little disappointed to find that the main ski – Jackson Hole – is a 30 minute $3 bus ride away but we’ve done worse. The area only has 11 lifts and minimal grooming so you are left wondering exactly why the 10 day lift pass is over $500.

There are some great runs although many are quite steep and the masses of recent powder leave the unfit and untrained struggling. Alas, that seemed to include me but I still managed to have a lot of fun.

Inghams

Our rep was a nice woman called Nikki. Originally Scottish but having lived out in Jackson for a while she now talks with a very strange accent.

While our rep was nice it’s worth mentioning that while Inghams can provide you with a lift pass for slightly less dollars than the resort they also convert that dollars to pounds there and then at a rather pathetic $1.6 to the pound rate so it may not work out so well. My ski hire was also more expensive per-dollar than going to the place directly which I did once my 3 day rental expired and I switched equipment.

So I don’t forget I’ll leave myself a little marker here. 160cm ski’s, 8.5 US boots and release tension setting 8.

Return trip

We said our goodbyes to James who was still in hospital and attached to lots of medical equipment and to Jim who would be his entourage home now Warren had hassled the insurance enough to get them to do something other than say "yeah it will be fine". As he pointed out walking into a hotel and saying "the insurance is paying for this" doesn’t elicit a "that’ll do nicely" response without paperwork or something.

The return trip was much shorter than the one out there and we were able to fly from Jackson straight to Atlanta which cut out another flight entirely. Alas the Delta transatlantic flight was much more crowded and too cold to sleep even with the paper thin blankets they provided.

It was with little surprise that I fell asleep quite quickly when I got home having left Jackson at 11am on Saturday and arrived home 2pm on Sunday after a brief Q&A with the people at Guernsey customs.

Sleeping when I got home was, of course, the stupidest thing to do because it meant a whole night of sleeplessness followed by a day of sleeping.

The joy of time-zones.

[)amien

Getting there

As always our first flight landed us at Gatwick. One overnight stay led us into flight 2 to Atlanta, Georgia via Delta Airlines. The flight was a whopping 9.5 hours but luckily quiet and under booked. If they hadn’t smashed the handle on my new luggage I might have given Delta a full 5 stars.

Things got exciting at US customs when the customs officer said "Come on little buddy" to a friend ahead of me. At that point all sense went out the window and was replaced by uncontrollable giggles and a bout of amnesia as to what exactly I’d come to do in the USA. Thankfully I’d already written out all the details on the Visa waiver form and despite a few stern looks and harsh words was let in. I guess terrorists and illegal immigrants don’t break out in a laughter attack at customs checkpoints.

Tired and dazed we boarded another 4 hour flight to Salt Lake City and then a quick 1 hour to Jackson itself where we finally met our Inghams rep Nicki – imagine a Scot with an American accent…

Man down

During our first day my friend James had a nasty fall off his snowboard that left him with a very painful wrist. As the day went on we found out it was dislocated and fractured and he was soon hospitalised.

As the week went on he’d go through three operations, have a metal plate put in his wrist and require a skin graft which would leave a massive red square of bare flesh on his leg.

To make matters worse he wouldn’t be able to join us on the return journey home and one of us would need to stay out a little longer to bring him home once the doctors think he’s ready.

Travel insurance is of course invaluable when this happens but phoning them up and making them sign forms when drugged up on morphine leaves a lot to be desired.

[)amien

The flight there was uneventful but dull thanks to Aurigny’s one-flight-per-day to Stansted at mid-day. This means 5 hours + of milling around. Thankfully Stansted isn’t quite as bad as I recalled and there are a few book and game shops to browse around in and I managed to keep my shopping down to a mere 3 books… Shame I already had 3 in my backpack.

After the introductions and a good nights sleep I put on my best "oh please" face and Clarissa drove us to Media Markt to see if they had Xbox 360′s in. Unsurprisingly they didn’t so we headed into Nuremberg to check out the shops and experience the Christmas market.

Having spent hours exploring the streets and stores of Nuremberg on a previous trip I stopped by EB Games in the mall and quickly acquired one of the two 360 core’s they had in stock as well as a wireless controller, Project Gotham 3 and Need for Speed Most Wanted. The box weighed the same as a small child but alas was not equipped with legs and so we dropped it back off at the car before my knuckles reached the floor.

The Christmas market was very atmospheric and the white lights the Germans favour over the English disco-fever multicolour bonanza felt less tacky and helped keep the descending chill of sunset at bay for a few minutes longer. We ate hot waffles and caramelised nuts whilst wandering around the multitude of stands before my feet eventually protested to further activities and we headed wearily back to the car.

Back at home we played a bit of 360 (I’ll post more on this in a future post) where I found that while the console and PGR3 will auto-switch to the language my NFS Most Wanted was decidedly German only and Clarissa had to help me every stretch as my German currently consists of telling people my stomach is empty or that I have hiccups.

We met the morning with tragic news… Clarissa’s parents had set-up the Christmas tree in the lounge where the only TV in the house and my 360 were. This meant after weeks of waiting to get one I would now have to wait 2 days before I could get back into the lounge to play it!

We had Christmas shopping to do and some friends to visit and between those two events I sunk into The Time Travellers Wife (a very good read so far and a similar core to something I had in mind a while back). Clarissa’s father had taken the plunge and installed a wifi ADSL connection so I kept up with emails and repeatedly checked for my assignment score.

On the 23rd we had a mini-grill/fondue night with friends where we ate lots and played some games. Unfortunately my German is still minimal despite evening lessons and Clarrissa’s help and her friends were only occasionally speaking English so the night went by with a rather detached feeling.

The 24th here in the UK is Christmas Eve, generally people rush around getting the final gifts they need for people before retiring for a few drinks with friends or family before a big meal and gift exchange on the 25th. In Germany the gifts and big meal happen on the 24th.

Clarissa’s parents cooked a fabulous dinner which we ate with her sister and brother-in-law and we all exchanged gifts. We even got her brother-in-law and father to have a quick go on PGR and NFS respectively with… well, mixed results.

Boxing day was a quiet affair but we took in some snow and a meal at a Chinese restaurant before packing as much as we could into our suitcases, grabbing 3 hours sleep and setting off at 4am for our flight back which involved an even longer sit at Stansted, falling asleep in departures, a nice sandwich at Pret and some woman throwing her coffee over my 360′s box.

Damn Sony fan girls.

[)amien