It's a good idea to have more than one person look at what time your flight is departing. That way you don't get to the airport in plenty of time for your 12:45 flight when your flight is actually at 2:45. Oh well, maybe subconsciously I knew that I needed to catch up on blog posts and the only way I'd allocate the time to do it is if I was stuck at an airport. At least we weren't two hours late!
In Jake's last post he talked about some funny things we've encountered over the past ten months (April 24th marks ten months since we left Boston for the UK!). I wanted to add a few more snippets:
- After someone hears that we are American, they almost always ask us what we think of Donald Trump. After we handle that and the conversation evolves, it amazes us how much people from other countries know about American politics.
- We still struggle with answering "where are you from?" Our most common response is that we are from the Northeast, near Boston and then people ask us with noticeable disappointment why we don't have a Boston accent. Jake always says it's because we watched too much TV growing up. If we happen to meet someone from the US we say that we grew up in NH. It feels weird to say that we are from NH when neither of us have lived there for almost two decades.
- No one assumes that we are married. People always refer to us as "partners" and we find it odd but it seems as though marriage is not as common in other parts of the world.
~ Jesslyn
Also, Jake wrote up a few items about NZ in particular that we get a kick out of, see below.
Bare Feet
An odd thing about NZ is that shoes are not required in stores and restaurants, and many people opt not to wear them. Not just dirty hippies either. Totally normal looking, well dressed people go about their day happy to let their piggies get sunlight and fresh air.
Currency
On one of our favorite topics, currency, NZ has a strange practice. They do not have pennies or nickels. However, prices are still listed down to the penny. After adding up the prices of all your items, the bill is rounded to the nearest multiple of 10 cents, if you are paying cash. If you pay with a credit card, you pay the exact amount. It is up to the retailer how they do the rounding, but most of them will round down if the cents end in 5 or less. It actually turns out this practice is not strange at all. Many countries do it, and Canada has been rounding to the nearest 5 cents for three years now.
Fluff
Most of you reading this will know what Fluff is, but for those of you that don't, it is the brand name of a marshmallow spread most often consumed by children in the form of a peanut butter and Fluff sandwich, commonly known as a "fluffernutter". I realize how funny that name must be to many people. If you don't know what a fluffer or a nutter are, google it, but just don't do it at work. While in the campervan, we had been eating many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (we are sooo American), and craved something different. So, on our next shopping trip we scoured the grocery store for the sweet, sticky goodness, Fluff. In the States, it is next to the peanut butter, so that is where we looked first. It wasn't there. Maybe in the baking aisle? Nope. Perhaps with the Vegemite? Uh uh. Maybe another grocery store? Nada. We looked for it every time we went shopping with no luck until we gave up hope. No Fluff in NZ. While secretly longing for the taste of childhood, we pretended to be content with PB&J for another week or so. Then strolling through the grocery store one day, I noticed a section for international foods. I am always curious about the odd things that people buy and sell, so stopped to check it out. "Hey look, they have an American food section!", I yelled to Jesslyn. We laughed at the items there, like fake Twizzlers, and both peanut butter and jelly in the same jar. Then we saw it... marshmallow spread... imitation Fluff! We never thought to look in the international food aisle (I never even thought there would be an American section). My first fluffernutter in probably 30 years was just as good as I remembered them to be.
- Jake