Some things about America

1. Everyone there is awfully noisy
2. The roads are super duper wide
3. Portions are HUUUUUGE!
4. People are louder
5. Customer service is so much better than it is in the UK
6. Detroit is sort of sad now.
7. But, The DIA has been redesigned really well and the new layout is pretty awesome.
8. This leads us to the hoodie I saw in the airport while we waited for our flight. It was green and in yellow letters it said: "Detroit is pretty awesome!" Way to aim for the mediocre Detroit!
9. Trouble is brewing with my family, trouble I have no control over at all. Trouble I will be hearing about for awhile. Trouble I will continue to try and buffer my niece from. But still, trouble.
10. It's hard to be a distant witness.
11. Being an expat is a bittersweet experience. Home becomes a really vague and varied notion. My home is here in London, with Jeremy and Oliver, in our house. But my home is also still in Michigan and Chicago and every time I go back to those places they become less and less recognizable. IE The party store where I used to blow my allowance on Charleston Chews, 3 Muskateers and New York Seltzer has been torn down. The man who bought the house I grew up in cut down all but on of our fruit trees, the Chestnut trees and the pine trees that I used to play under. The mall has become a ghost town. Royal Oak is barely a shadow of what I remember, it's all chain stores now. My friends are buying houses. Lori's son is 4 and can speak in sentences. Everything is sort of the same, but very different.
12. I miss my friends a lot. I only got to spend one day with them and it wasn't enough.
13. I never, ever want to live someplace without decent public transportation ever again. Cars are boring!
14. The snow was beautiful even if it did cause car accidents.
15. I miss Thanksgiving.
16. I may even miss my family just a tiny tiny bit. Don't tell any of them though, okay.