The other day KathyR at Everybody Knows asked me a question:
Besides family and foodstuffs, what do you miss most (if anything) about living in the USofA? And are you ever coming back?
I've been thinking hard on this, stumped for an answer since she eliminated the two obvious choices: food and family. I was going to go with convenience, or customer service, which there is a decided lack of here, but those are concepts, not things.
So today I hit on it: thick socks. It's impossible to find thick socks here. There are plenty of thin, fashionable socks, but thick thirsty socks that you can wear with sensible shoes and hiking boots? No, for that you have to catch a flight to JFK.
I was shopping with a friend in London one day, an American who's lived here longer than me, and she told me she flies to New York every year to buy socks. We offer to buy socks for each other, whenever one of us is heading back to the States.
The last question is easier to answer. We were originally scheduled to be here three years, but we recently learned it will be five. So, with two and a half years under our belt, we're at the half way point. Me, I'm perfectly willing to stay longer, except for the sock thing.
Someone ought to start a sock exchange.
