Grocery Run

So, it may seem silly to go on a grocery run when I live in a catered residence hall, but actually, it is needed. I don't have lunch, and some days I can't make it to my meals, so having a stock of food is a handy thing. My beside table has a handy little cabinet that I had no use for until now -- food pantry! A very small food pantry.

Today I bought a day pass for the bus, met up with two friends, and went to ASDA -- it's similar to Wal-Mart, but not as big (or awesome). Then we grocery shopped like we were on fire because we only had about 40 minutes to look around and get our food.

So now I am able to make myself some PB&J (strawberry J for now, raspberry next time), but I also got Nutella perviously. A funny thing here is all of these lovely items are stored in glass bottles. An Australian friend told me how she saved the Nutella jars for glasses, because they're the perfect shape, and now I shall do the same. When I told her Americans use plastic containers, she thought it was strange.

I also have some delicious Volvic flavored water and some milk. Milk was more of a dilemma. I am not a big fan of milk, but whenever I eat something sweet, I always want some. In the dining hall though, milk is only available in the mornings, and no one here really DRINKS a glass of milk. Instead they pour it on their cereal or in their tea or coffee... and so on. I felt like I needed to do something to get my dairy, so I bought a small container of skimmed milk. Only two choices: skimmed or whole milk. 500ml or 1L. According to the container, once opened, it can only last for 3 days. Or one week without opening. This is so strange to me, but it makes me wonder what's IN American milk??

I also bought some other necessities and food, but overall it was a good run. I wish I could've stayed there longer to see everything, but no time. People might think it's silly to like wandering around a supermarket, but me and some of my friends disagree. I think you can learn a lot about a culture too just by what's available at a store like that.

Fat Tuesday is also called Pancake Day apparently, but American pancakes do not exist here. The British equivalent is a crepe. So, one day, I will buy ingredients to make pancakes from scratch. It makes sense that no Bisquick exists here, because they don't have American biscuits either. I tried to explain the breakfast meal of biscuits and gravy, but a British friend thought that sounded silly. Yet to me it's silly to eat spaghetti hoops (aka spaghetti-o's) and mushrooms for breakfast. There are no hash browns that are shredded either.

My computer just gave me two warnings in Chinese (which I cannot read), so maybe it's time to finish this entry. I will finish with one more difference.

British keyboards are very similar to American ones, but the "enter" key is smaller (I constantly miss it with my pinky) and the @ symbol is switched with the " symbol. There are more differences on the keyboard, but those are the ones that stick out to me the most. Those extra symbols are just all switched around, but I tend to forget where they are on American keyboards, so it doesn't affect me as much.

Oh! I went to Warwick and Stratford Upon Avon (Shakespeare's birthplace/grave), but I shall save that for a different entry.