Friday, June 29th 2007, Wake up time 6:00 am
As before, I woke up surprisingly early. The first thing that I did that morning was check my e-mail. I can't remember the e-mails, but I'm sure they were various posts on my old myspace. Remember when people used to use that? Ha! How things have changed. Lyle had downloaded a demo version of the game Dark Messiah (which I have never played since) and all I remember was that it was quite slow on his computer. During my stay, Lyle slowly bought parts for a new computer and built one up himself!
After breakfast, Bev informed us that she had some shopping to get and I needed to buy some new clothes. Due to weight limits with my luggage it was decided that it would be easier to buy most of my clothes in America, especially as they're considerably cheaper and a better quality. We left about 9am and we stopped off at Old Navy. Old Navy is a cheap store that sells reasonable quality clothes, no brand names. It's a really good place for Summer clothes as it's main menswear is shorts and short sleeved t-shirts. I purchased three shirts for $18 and two pairs of shorts for $35. If you halve that to English pounds it's remarkably cheap.
I'm only writing down the prices because it's all part of what I want to write down, not the most interesting of details but still important to me. :) Also, I encountered the American tax system. The Americans, for some unknown reason, don't tax their own items! So whenever you're there, in case you didn't know, always add on a small price to what you're buying as this is the tax. Their tax is a lot lower than ours (varies state to state) but they don't automatically tax items so expect to pay more than it states. Now I'm finished with that boring detail...I can let you know of another part of the day!
We stopped off at Trader Joe's, which is your run-of-the-mill food place. After Bev had picked up her groceries (see my use of American terminology there?) we headed home. First though we stopped off at a bakery for a cookie :) It was delicious! The Americans know how to do their sweet food. Once we got home, I cleaned the bathroom downstairs. This was primarily Lyle's and mine to use for showers and baths. During my stay, Lyle and I rotated the cleaning of the bathroom and the kitchen between each other. If we cleaned the bathroom at least once a week and kept it clean by that Friday, we got an allowance of $10. If we cleaned the kitchen every night, i.e. loaded the dishwasher and cleaned the surfaces and cleared everything, we got $20 at the end of the week. This was very reasonable in my eyes as neither job was too taxing unless you let it get on top of you.
After that, Lyle, Claire and I went outside for a brief spell of exercise with a game of frisbee. We clearly had no common sense at that age as we played across the road and at one point it landed in the middle and was run over by a car :( Well done us. After a quick telling off from Bev, I went into Lyle's room and played a quick game of Dungeon Keeper. This is a game that is very old but I love it just as much today. If you're that interested in what you have to do, just google it :D I'll tell you that you play as a Dungeon Master and control hordes of minions and attempt to control them and develop them to take over the kingdom. Wasn't the worth learning? It was after I got bored that I went and just lay on Lyle's bed (not with Lyle, you perverts) and that's when the jet-lag finally hit. I was suddenly hit with a wave of fatigue and promptly crashed and slept for the afternoon.
I was awoken sometime around six, if memory serves me correctly, by Bev with instructions to help was the garden chairs with Lyle and Claire as we had guests coming! We quickly hosed and wiped them down. (Why am I telling you this?) At 7:15 the guests arrived.
It was two families, the Wienburgs and the Pisanos. Julia was the daughter of the Weinburgs and Claire's friend, and Greg was the son of the Pisanos and Lyle's best friend. As dinner wasn't quite ready, we headed for the park. I had never been but it wasn't a far walk. The Cadorettes (my host family, in case you didn't figure that out) lived in a suburb called 'Manor Park.' It was a lovely neighbourhood where, yes all the houses looked the same, but it was a pleasant looking and aesthetically pleasing to the eye. The park was by the pond, well, to us Brits more like a lake. It had a small child's area to play in and a couple of swings but apart from that it was just a big area with grass.
We only hung out at the park for a little while, not a whole lot to do. We then had a race home and Claire lost one of her shoes. As a joke, I took it, ran home and showed it to Bev and in a completely serious tone said "Claire...she had an accident, this is all that's left." It turns out, it wasn't that funny...the Americans do not get our sense of humour at all... After that incident we sat down to dinner, American Chop Suey...It's hard to describe but it's basically hotdogs in pasta with a tomato sauce. It is one of the best things I tried there, and really easy to make! I must remember to get the recipe for that...
After dinner, we moved into the living room area, which held Ralph's expensive stereo, WHICH YOU MUST NOT TOUCH. We sat down and played Apples to Apples, which I can't quite remember how to play (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apples_to_Apples) and then charades which I'm sure you know. If you don't, you all write down various books, films or television shows and then put them in a pile in the centre. You divide up into teams and somebody goes up and chooses one of these unseen titles. They then have to describe it using various hand actions to each team and the first team to guess correctly gets the point. If that description wasn't good enough, tough. I'll just teach you sometime. I wish I could tell you who won, but I'm sure it was us, for I am the master of Charades.
After the guests had left, the last thing left to do was to pack my suitcase. I was being kicked out...
Just kidding! We were heading on a Lake trip, Lake Winnipesaukee to be precise, and you can find out about that tomorrow! It's the largest lake in New Hampshire for those people who care. I hope you've enjoyed reading about my day.
Thanks for listening.
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