Hmm, is it just me, or does everyone have the urge to post several entries at once when they first start blogging? Maybe it's because we have a lot we want to say. Or maybe it's just the fact that I'm currently on my own in Oklahoma, USA and haven't managed to speak a word to anyone all day. I've smiled at two people mind, but no words have come out yet.
To elaborate, I'm currently visiting a lab at Oklahoma State University in the 'little' town of Stillwater. Notice the 'little' in inverted commas. Nothing that I've seen in the US is little. From the way the buildings sprawl over the landscape to the king-size tubs of ice-cream in the Wal-Mart. Or maybe emperor-sized. I've never seen such large tubs of ice-cream outside wholesale retailers in the UK. The department I'm visiting is Entomology and Plant Pathology, as I'm a PhD student in Plant Virology. It's a big building, but due to the nature of the research, everyone is either doing fieldwork somewhere or hiding in the labs. So it feels a little like walking through a school during the summer holidays when I wander through the corridors. It took me half an hour to find the ice machines.
The people here however are really friendly, really wonderful. Take Star, who works in the lab I'm visiting. I arrived in the lab on 29th Feb, Friday morning. He promptly rang his wife at lunch-time to check if he could invite me to their house for dinner that night, bearing in mind I still didn't know where anything was, and didn't know where to go grocery shopping. Which isn't normally a problem in towns in Europe. You just go for a wander around the town and you find some sort of convenience store. Not so here, where you could get hopelessly lost trying to find the exit to the campus. Anyway, his wife said yes, and so that was that. Star even left his bike and walked the 30 minute walk to his house with me, as I would never have found it otherwise.
The American and Canadian children that I've met seem to be more confident than their English counterparts. At least, that's the impression I have from my limited exposure to North American kids. I know lots of confident, happy, English children, but they usually take a while to get used to people they don't know well, especially adults. They don't usually leap around and do a little dance for the benefit of their parents' friends less than a minute after they've met them. Which is what Julia, Star's daughter, did when I appeared at their house. Perhaps I'm used to 'English reserve'.
Julia is a great kid, very confident, very obviously much-loved, and sometimes a little demanding. The brilliant thing is that she's not a spoilt brat either. There was a considerateness and maturity that seems quite special in a girl of maybe seven years old. In between the cheekiness and high spiritedness.
However, today is Sunday, and as I have no internet in my room, I'm in the lab. Quiet. Literally not even a mouse. There are two goldfish in a tank if I walk down the stairs and along the corridor, but they didn't respond when I tried to strike up a conversation. I haven't seen anyone around my accommodation either, despite deliberately choosing university halls so there would be other students about. Maybe I'm just not trying hard enough. But I don't feel quite confident enough to walk into the lobbies of the other halls and talk to random people. Perhaps it's my Englishness coming through there. But tomorrow's Monday, so I know I'll see other people. I'll have to be careful not to be hyperactive, as is my wont when I've been on my own for a while, otherwise I might scare them all off.
But then again, perhaps it's what they're used to in this part of the world?
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