13/7/2011 - Homesick

Spent a lot of time at the house the last few days because poor little Adam has been sick with streptococcus, but luckily he's feeling a lot better today, even though his temperature is still sky high at times. Apparently strep is contagious, but I feel like if  was going to get it, I would of by now. Turns out also, I'm only covered under my insurance for emergency medical treatment, so not if I need to go see the doctor. It's strange seeing how medical care here is different. For example, it was weird for me that when we took Adam into the doctor's office, the woman behind the counter proceeded to say "That's $25 please.".  And that's on top of what you pay for medical insurance here already. You also wait a lot longer here. When you eventually get called through to the office from the waiting area, the doctor isn't in there like in the UK. No, the doctor moves around different rooms, so you wait a further x amount of minutes in there for him to show up. I was impressed that at that particular doctor's surgery, they had the lab there and done all the tests there, with the results within 10 minutes. But,  I guess what I was thinking that, if medical care is treated as a private, competitive business in which it is not free at the point of service, I'd want a better quality of care. It's made me appreciate the NHS. Anyone can talk down the NHS, but the (little) insight I've had into medicine here tells me that not only is the NHS better, but it's cheaper for each person through taxes and even though many people assume that socialised medicine will produce substandard care, it's not the case. So no 'room for competition' in the NHS Cameron, piss off. On a similar note, you should all watch Michael Moore's 'Sicko'. We watched it in my Politics class at the end of the first year and I guess whilst I've been thinking about American healthcare, I've been thinking a lot about that film too.

Today, I am homesick. It started last night when I was showing Emma pictures of home. Just silly things like my room, my car, food. I had a lot of pictures of my food on my phone, I don't know why I always want to take pictures of my meals. But also, it was Nikki's birthday yesterday and she passed her driving test, and I really just wanted to be there to celebrate with her. I'm missing Mum a lot too, it's horrible not to just be able to pop in for a cup of tea and sympathy, even though we're skyping pretty much every day. People keep telling me the first month is the hardest, and I'm sure they're right. Did you guys realise that in 10 days I'll have been gone for a month? That's flown by huh? On the one hand I'm glad because then I'll be home quicker. But on the other, bigger, heavier, more important hand I should be enjoying my time away as much a possible and not wishing it away. Don't get me wrong, I am enjoying myself. Mum gave me this advice once about relationships "If not it's fun anymore, stop doing it" - I think I've applied this in more areas though. When I was in New York and decided I didn't want to be at Latasha's because it wasn't fun, I left. If I didn't want to be doing all this, I wouldn't be doing it. I am having fun. Just today, it's been a down day, it didn't help that I checked my money this morning and realised I spent far too much in New York, so from now on it's nothing special. These days are bound to happen I suppose, tomorrow will be better I'm sure.

For the last few days whilst we've been here, I got a little hooked to playing Lego Harry Potter on the PS3 and it made me realise that I never reread the books after Mum read them to me when I was little/I read them as I got old enough to. Since I can't be carrying a million books with me, I downloaded the audiobooks and put them on my iPod. It;s not the same, but it's still good, and they're read by Stephen Fry - instant win! Listened to a couple of chapters last night when I had this amazzzzzing bath.

Bubbles, bath milk, bath salts and jacuzzi jets! It was heaven.

Today, we went over to Birch Tree so Emma could help Jess swap his old freezer for his new one and to clean up a bit. I watched the kids whilst we were there and they were really good actually, playing in the pool and on the playset. It was so hot though, sweltering. Thank God for air conditioning, that's all I'm saying. But, I did not get burnt! That's right, did not! Emma did find one of those spiders I was telling you all about though, ew.

Tonight I made us dinner of bangers and mash - yay Britain! Not before I again got confused and lost in the supermarket. It's funny how the little things that are different here can be the most irritating. So in Tesco, the juice, fizzy and squash is all together right? I mean, even the alcohol is on that same aisle. Everything to drink is together. Not here, it's in all spread out places that are designed to confuse. Also, finding normal sausages is impossible. Chicken sausages - check. Turkey sausages - check. Spinach and feta sausages - check. Normal sausages - no chance. There were about 10 different types of 'Italian Hot and Spicy Sausage' too. Ended up buying what looked closest to normal sausages. I tried to make yorkshire puddings too after getting the recipe from Mum, but they failed. I think it was more due to my impatience. They looked more like they were turning into cakes, and because everything else was done I took them out. I looked at them later and them had sunk to look like real yorkshire puds, I should have just left them in. Dinner was nice though, and Emma and the boys enjoyed it.

In the little and uninteresting things news - my hair became less dark and more red, I arranged having my mail delivered here and I bought myself some mini iPod speakers.

I'm excited for tomorrow because we're going out to lunch with Jess which will be lovely. Now going to watch Family Guy and then listen to some Harry Potter, night guys!

OH! And one very exciting thing - I've had over 1000 views on this blog since I left the UK on June 23rd, thank you!