Never have I ever .... until now!

We've been having a lot of fun adjusting to this new country of ours, though some things are more fun than others. For instance, I had never had the delicious experience of being the oldest and only married couple on campus for a week solid. We happened to arrive at the same time as all of the freshers so we were constantly surrounded by tiny, giggly girls and awkward, staring boys. The thought crossed my mind that we would be alone for the rest of our year here without a soul to talk to - no fun! Fortunately that changed as the rest of everyone came and we met others in the post-graduate department.

I have also never moved into what is basically dormitory housing to find a plethora of drinking glasses specifically designed with alcohol in mind. We have two whiskey shot glasses, four small wine goblets and several pint glasses. There hasn't been much in the way of tastiness to grace those glasses yet but we'll get around to it. By that time, perhaps we'll be comfortable toting our various beverages home from the store without the discreetness of bags like the rest of our town. Very interesting indeed.

Never before have I been able to see a sea from my apartment! We have the extreme pleasure of looking over the North Sea each and every day. There was one day that we could not see it but that was due to the amount of mist in the air so we couldn't really see much of anything at all.

A new experience I have more than thoroughly enjoyed was our mini pub crawl. This is not at all to say that I had loads to drink or did foolish things or go into any trouble. My enjoyment stemmed from the mere fact of being able to go with my friends to an actual pub and not leave reeking of smoking or having a headache. Smoking is banned in all shops here! The entire pub atmosphere is rather different than what you would find in America. During the day, it's a family friendly establishment and you'll often see kids there. Night time is more adult only but the seedy characters are missing. You can order food from a fairly extensive menu till rather late into the night and it isn't so loud that you can't have a conversation with the friends across the table.

I love this country.