Time For A Change

So I thought I’d follow my last blog with something a little more light-hearted and share with you a little incident that I had yesterday involving money. I had popped into the convenience store to pick up some snacks (what else do you do after you’ve been to the gym!) and perused through the crisps (sorry 'chips'*) and biscuit (sorry 'cookie') section for a fare few minutes as I was waiting for the torrential rain outside to pass. You would think that in New England they'd at last have tried to improve the weather but hey ho, can't have everything. Anyways, I eventually made my decision (chips ahoy cookies and some baked pita ‘chips’ in case you were wondering) and headed to the cash point. It was here that my troubles began.

Now America is a glorious country in that it has $1 bills why haven’t we come up with that yet?! They’re SO much lighter! But, you see, I’m still not quite used to that fact so I have constantly being paying with 5s and 10s until I suddenly realised that my purse was literally overflowing with $1 bills; in fact, that was all I had.. Uh oh. The moment had arrived when I would have to actually use some change; dimes, nickels, quarters, yep, the real American deal. I could feel the guy behind the counter judging me as I slowly tried to count out 67 cents carefully trying to remember how much each coin was worth. I was determined, now I'd started using my coins, I'd have to finish - plus I could no longer close the coin compartment of my purse which always makes things slightly tricky.

Needless to say I failed. What sort of country doesn't inscribe on the coin how much it is worth AND makes a 10¢ coin smaller that a 5¢ coin? It makes no sense! Luckily the kind guy behind the counter helped me out and I found myself putting on my poshest English accent in an attempt to try and justify my utter stupidity. I think it was gym karma, trying to stop me from pigging out after my Pilates session.

So I’ve officially been here 5 weeks. Guess it’s still going to take a while to get completely used to everything and you'll all be pleased to know that I'm still as 'special' as ever -  I haven't changed a bit... no pun intended.

*translation provided for my American readers!