Settling in to Arizona: Lego, Animals and Personal Style

 When we lived in Scotland, I could always write about cultural differences.  Or somewhere scenic we had been; as we knew we were only going to be there for two years, we were a lot more motivated to travel around and see things. However, now back in Arizona, the cultural differences are minimized (other than the occasional, "Wow, Americans are weird" moment) and we don't have much time or motivation to travel - we're busy on the weekends seeing family and friends, having playdates with new friends, and juggling schedules.

So what ARE we doing here in Arizona? Well, we build a lot of Lego creations, thanks to three Christmas-time infusions of old-school Lego - we now have 2.5 boxes of Lego bricks and a lovely rainbow carpet on which to build.   

Claire and Paul in building mode

 The Lego obsession has also sparked a science project - Audrey is investigating, for her first science project, whether she can build a taller Lego tower on the carpet or the concrete.

105 Lego bricks! (It topped out at 133, in case you were wondering)

Beyond Lego, we are of course working on our own personal styles, including accessorizing the preschool class "pet" - a stuffed chipmunk called Figaro.

Princess wearing sister's outgrown Christmas dress and Figaro sporting a pink ribbon outfit designed by Audrey

We spent nearly a week in San Diego with friends Uhrs and Christina and their daughter, leading to a number of personal style photo ops as well:

Audrey in Balboa Park

She hurt her knee, hence the rolled-up pant leg - plus the cowgirl boots. Classic. 

 Finally, we've been bonding with animals.  Audrey had a class at the zoo where she got to go behind the scenes with a zookeeper - she even got to pet a rhino ("Fireball") and clean out the giraffe house.  As a reward for scooping giraffe poo, the class got to feed the giraffes carrots - Claire and I got to, too, and as a reward this giraffe posed for me:

I never got this giraffe's name: I will call him or her #3.

In addition to getting to know wild animals, the girls were also thrilled to play with Uncle Patrick and Aunt Charlene's new dog Daisy, an older rescue dog who they are training and acclimating to hanging out with people - by bribing her with cheese.

Girls with Daisy, Uncle Patrick and Aunt Charlene

Stay tuned for further Orzech adventures...we're hoping to hike more, get out to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, and otherwise enjoy Arizona in the winter!

My Dear Old Arizona Home

Sabino Canyon, November 27, 2015

Audrey helping make rolls for Thanksgiving

Well, we're officially back in Tucson.  Things are different here, but at the same time familiar. Even though the University of Arizona has 40,000+ students and who knows how many faculty and staff (well, someone must know, but they're sure not advertising it online), I find that I run into people I know a quite lot.  The same is true outside the University - I've returned to the church I attended here in the past, and still know many people, even if their kids are lots older than I remember. I'm sure they're thinking the same thing about my kids. We even run into people we know around town - hiking in Sabino Canyon, even shopping at Target.  And of course we have family here now too, so we've been able to spend a lot of quality time with them (although I'm sure Paul's parents are happy we've now moved into our own place, so they can have some of their space back).

Claire drawing in our work-in-progress living room

We're doing the usual stuff you do when you arrive to a new (old) place - trying to get the house in order, keeping up with school stuff for the girls, thinking about (and rejecting, for now) getting involved in activities - Audrey would love to take gymnastics, but without a stay-at-home parent it becomes an additional burden for grandparents to drive her to and fro - same for dance class for Claire. Or, do it on a Saturday and cut into family  - or free - time for everyone. Running around 5 days a week seems like enough.  In Scotland, we jumped in with both feet, because we knew we'd only be there 2 years - and the adults had as many activities as the kids, trying to get plugged into the community fast.  Here in Tucson, we're more laid back.  We have family.  We have old friends. New friends and networks would be nice, but are not immediately required.

Swimming in Grammie and Grampie's pool (briefly) in October

I am still amazed at how nice the weather is here.  You can pretty much guarantee that most days will be sunny.  I remember moving here in 2001 for graduate school and waking up every morning for the first three months thinking, "Wow, it's sunny and clear!"  And eventually realizing it's ALWAYS sunny and clear. A cloud is weather. Seriously. And in October it was a little chilly to be in the pool, but once the sun warmed it up you could jump in for a quick swim. Try THAT in Scotland in October (or, in fact, anytime...) By the time we acclimated to the hot weather (meaning that when it dropped below 60 degrees, it felt cool) it was hard to even remember how warm the same temperature in Scotland felt in mid-summer. The light is welcome, too - it gets light, even in the winter, at 7 am. This makes a huge difference!

Driving to school

While light and warmth are welcome changes (at least until April, when the balance tips from "nice and warm" to "hellishly hot") some things are not so welcome, like tons of driving.  I didn't drive for two years in the U.K. I did not miss it.  And then suddenly I was the school transportation master in the morning, and this meant 60 minutes in the car every morning.  The commute has shortened somewhat now that we're in our new place, but I used to walk for 30 minutes every morning, taking Audrey up to school and then walking down to work, and now I just drive. And sit. And drive.  I do take advantage of the fact that U of A has a beautiful campus for walking when I can - I try to do circuits around buildings and stairs too, especially now when you can take a lunchtime walk and not melt into a puddle on the sidewalk.

Saguaro on campus

The desert has a different kind of beauty than Scotland, and it can surprise you.  The view includes a lot more blue sky and while there is still green, it's not the rolling green of Scotland. It's the grey-green "Don't get too close, I'm armed!" of cactus and their friends.

We went to visit Sabino Canyon on the day after Thanksgiving.  Sabino is the most "touristy" canyon in Tucson - locals as well as out of town visitors flock there, and you can take a tram up the 3.8 mile paved road to nearly the top of the canyon.  You can connect to more rugged hiking trails, but the basic idea of Sabino Canyon is that it's easy to access.  As such a touristy place, it's a bit hard to feel like you're getting the real Sonoran Desert experience...but at the same time, it's a lot easier to go there with kids. We took the tram (over Paul's protest). The kids loved it. The canyon was beautiful because it's one of the few places in town where there are trees that actually change color for fall.  In most of the city, it's pine trees, palm trees, and cactus (although a friend back in grad school did try to convince a friend of ours from New Jersey that the cactus lost their needles in the winter...she believed him for about a minute).  But Sabino was dotted with yellow and orange trees mixed among the saguaros, and the stream was running high due to recent rain.  It hardly seemed like the desert at all. 

Sabino Canyon, November 27, 2015

And for those of you who are still wondering about the title of this post: it's a Rex Allen song. We included it on our wedding CD years ago, and here's a link to the YouTube version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nne_tetupyM.   

Scotland vs. Arizona: Reverse Culture Shock

People have been asking me: "So how does it feel to be back in Tucson?" And the answer is, "Mainly, weird."

Some things feel very normal - for example, driving again is pretty much like it ever was, despite the kids' amazement that now I can drive.  With broad roads,  well-signed streets, and a zippy new(ish) car, driving is pretty easy, except for the unpredictable behavior of other drivers.   

But little things are odd.

I'm still walking on the wrong side of the walking path, which tends to be a problem on a campus with 50,000+ people - I'm likely to get bashed into (or run over by a bike, skateboard, or golf cart) if I'm not careful.

U of A Administrative building with cactus garden in front

When I went out to lunch, and we cleared our table afterward, it felt odd, as you would just leave your dishes on the table for someone else to clear in Scotland, even at a small cafe, so I haven't cleared my dishes at a restaurant for 2 years.

Looking at refrigerators and washing machines and cars (for example) - lots of things are just BIGGER in the U.S. These things seemed small in Scotland at first, and then we got used to the smallness so now everything seems big.

Dropping the kids off at school is different - I've traded a 30 minute walk (up two hills to A's school and down 1 1/12 hills to my work) for a 60 minute drive each morning, dropping C off, and then A, and then finally heading to work myself.  I still get a bit of a walk...but when I got my parking permit, the guys looked at me strangeley, as if "Why would you want to walk; most people want to park as close as possible to work!" And they wonder why obesity is a major problem in the U.S.

The Mexican food is certainly a lot better here, and the diversity of places to eat.  But with diversity comes mediocrity, too.  There are a LOT of "not that good" restaurants that can stay in business (all they have to do is fool some of the people, some of the time), so you have to be wary. And the prices seem to have risen exponentially in the five years we've been gone. We haven't even tried the sushi place yet, concerned about sticker shock.

There is a lot of choice...Dundee has fewer choices, in places to shop, places to eat - we relied a lot more on Amazon.co.uk to get us things that we wanted but couldn't find conveniently in town.  But in Tucson, choice abounds. Restaurants, stores, multiple malls. But then you have Target - which I missed when we first arrived in Dundee, but now seems like a black hole for money - you walk in, and $65 is vacuumed out of your pocket.  Even if you're only stopping by "to get one little thing."  In the UK, pharmacies sell medicines and a few related items (diapers, sanitary supplies). In Tucson, medicines are only one of approximately a million items sold by Walgreens or CVS. 

As I was when I first arrived in Tucson from the East Coast, I am surprised and how sunny it is, and how big the sky is.  Scotland has beautiful scenery on a sunny day, but the sun, and open space are different here in Arizona.

It's different driving around, too...I keep wanting to pull the car over and snap pictures of the "different from Dundee" things - like storefronts advertising homemade tamales, and tortillas. Like the surprisingly large number [now THIS is something that has changed in 5 years] of places where you can be certified as a user of medical marijuana...just right there as you drive past...don't know if they're all dispenaries, or a combination of sellers and "doctors" [I put this in quotes not because I doubt effects, but because this doesn't seem like the kind of service a doctor might specialize in, or advertise widely, but maybe it's just me] popping up to serve a market that has probably always been there in Tucson, but just not so..in your face.

I'm switching back to American words and spellings, even though I had switched over in Scotland - it's a bin, not a trash can; trousers, not pants; I'd even started saying "If you fancy X" - all that has to go. Ditto spelling - writing papers for British journals, having my email correct me when I slipped up - "behaviour", especially was one I used a lot and now have to not spell "wrong" for the American audience. 

But maybe I should try to keep the British spelling and speech patterns - I fogot how "cool" it is to be British in the U.S. It gives you a certain authority that you lack if you're just a regular American.  Some of my new co-workers were telling me I had an accent - I tried to explain that I've always kind of had a British-esqe accent, but it's just magnified by virtue of having spent two years where all my co-workers sounded like that...but maybe I should just cultivate it, and pretend I'm really a Brit. Trouble is, if I really try to do a Scottish accent, I end up sounding like the leprechaun from Lucky Charms. So scratch that. I'll just have to be an American for whom, right now, Scotland seems normal and Arizona seems weird.  Until it doesn't anymore.    

The Long Goodbye to Scotland

The problem with having a set date for leaving a place is that "When are you leaving?" becomes a topic of conversation far earlier than you might like it to.  While we knew my contract ended on October 2015, as early as this past April, people we knew in Dundee started conversations by talking about our departure.  They didn't mean to be rude - it was just something to talk about.  And most of it sounded a bit like this:

"So, what are you going to do when your contract ends?"
"Probably go back to the States."
"Don't you want to stay?"
"It's complicated and expensive to stay."
"Oh. But don't you want to stay?"
(Orzechs change subject)

About June, we decided we were definitely going back, but we didn't know exactly to where. So the conversations started to sound like:

"So what are you going to do when you go back?"
""We're going, but we don't know what we're going to do yet. We'll find jobs."
"Why don't you stay?"
(Orzechs change subject)

Finally, after all our lovely summer visitors left in mid-August, we packed all our things and sent them back to Tucson.  By the end of August, Paul had rekindled his relationship with his old boss and workplace and had been offered a job at the foundry, and I had a promising interview as a nutrition program evaluator (which I ultimately got). By September, the conversations started to sound like this:

"Congratulations on your jobs!"
"Thanks."
"So what's next?"
"Well, two cars and a place to live, schools for the girls..all to be accomplished in a couple of weeks"
"Wow. We'll miss you."
"We'll miss you too"
(Orzechs change subject)

Finally, it was the end of September, and it was really time to say goodbye. We packed and repacked our suitcases, and got rid of a lot of things, which is trickier in the UK than the US - the charity shops are small, and they just can't take all your stuff at once.  So we were giving things away to everyone we knew, and slowly carrying things up the hill to the charity shop for the last couple of weeks.  On the last few days, we were hauling things up the hill to the dumpsters near the apartment complexes, because our own bins were full.

We had dinners with friends, and a beautiful afternoon with the Loves, our family-in-Scotland - they were among the first people we met when we moved, and we maintained and built our friendship across two years. I had recruited Sarah Love into Loadsaweeminsingin, and without my knowledge, on my last night of singing, she organized the ladies to sing the Proclaimers song "Letter from America" - the chorus goes "When you go, will you send me a letter from America?" I was almost in tears to have to leave all these lovely singing ladies.  Paul had a last few surfing trips to St. Andrews with his friend Mike, and had a final goodbye trip our to our local pubs - Drouthys and Speedwell - with some of his yoga friends. Audrey went to Brownies on the Thursday night, and all of the sudden, there it was - our two years in Dundee over.  Well, not until after we sat in a lot of traffic going to Glasgow with my wonderful boss Wendy, who helped us bring all our stuff into the hotel and then turned around to head back to Dundee. But then, poof.

The trip back to the States was long - we should have taken the more direct flight rather than go via Iceland - it looks very cool, but we hadn't scheduled a stop.  The three days with my parents in DC felt like vacation - if our last week and all the shared meals in Dundee felt like a cross between Thanksgiving (seeing all the people you love) and a funeral (mourning the loss of people you may never see again), the time in Virginia just felt like Thankgiving. With family. With more family, and with the people we adopted as our family a long time ago (25 years, I guess we are family by now, Townsleys). And then we really moved to the United States - we got in the plane and flew to Tucson, and began adjusting back to life in another country where the driving distances are vast, the refrigerators and washers are huge, and even when it's (occasionally) cloudy and gray, the breezes are still warm.

Stay Tuned.  

Guest Blog: All About the UK, by A (7 years old)

As most of you know, we've been moving continents recently,  so I've been a bit busy and been neglecting the blog.  However, our seven-year old, as she patiently (and sometimes impatiently) waits for school to start after Fall Break here in Arizona, has been working hard to have something to show her new classmates to tell them about where she's just come from.  She drew some lovely drawings to go along with some of these statements - I've added some pictures I had in my computer instead.  

Hope you enjoy this guest blog: All about the UK, from the 7-year-old's perspective.

 

Midges are small insects that bite and leave itchy bumps.

A lot of islands are off the coast. Some of the names are: Staffa and Skye.

Island of Staffa, off the West coast of Scotland

 In the Highlands sheep block the roads.

Some men grow big beards.

Temperature is measured in Celsius; 0 degrees Celsius would be 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

It rains most every day.

My old school was called St. Joseph’s.

I lived in the city of Dundee by the river Tay.

Tay Rail bridge over the River Tay

 Edinburgh and London have castles and palaces.

 

The family in front of Edinburgh Castle

You can walk everywhere.

Lots of people go camping.

There are lots of rivers in Scotland.

There are lots of farms in Scotland.

There is a type of cow in Scotland called a Highland cow they have big horns.

Highland Cow at Blair Atholl, near campground

 There are a lot of green plants and grass in Scotland.

That is a little bit of information about Scotland and the UK.

Scotland and Dundee are a part of the UK.

Breaking the Rules: A Word about Ahmed

Disclaimer: I am by no means an expert on the events that took place when a kid brought a homemade clock to school and got arrested because of it. In fact, I am not even there in the U.S. Regardless, these are my thoughts.

When I wrote "Breaking the Rules" as the start of this blogpost title, I didn't mean it as a reference to Ahmed's actions, although it's likely that bringing an invention to school that had the potential to go off/ring may have broken some rule. That phrase was more about this blog, which is generally about travel and occasionally funny accents, and rarely about media frenzies.

I wanted to write this brief blog to say two things:

1) I sympathize with the teacher who called the cops, and the cops themselves.

2) I have decidedly mixed feelings about the public accolades from no less than Barak Obama and Mark Zuckerberg, for goodness sake.  

My first introduction to this story came when I saw the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed on Twitter.  At that point I didn't know the story, but a trip to Facebook quickly provided me with the basics of what happened, as well as people sharing tweets from Obama and Zuckerberg.

I don't mean to say that the people who accused this 14-year-old of making a bomb didn't jump to conclusions.  Clearly, they did.  But as someone who has been in front of high school and University classes over 10+ years, and who has read more than my share of articles about school shootings and other mass shooting incidents (see the Washington Post fact-checker blog for the difference), I don't blame the teacher for being cautious.  Would you rather be wrong and embarass a kid, or be wrong and wind up putting yourself and others in danger? I know which one I'd choose.  As for the cops, they too jumped to conclusions, but their training likely emphasizes that things out of the ordinary may lead to danger.  So again, they went too far, but they were probably operating on the same diet of school (and general) violence that is so well-reported by the media.

Secondly, the "celebrity endorsments."  It seems like Ahmed is a bright kid.  And he clearly has enthusiasm for engineering and robotics, which is commendable.  But does he really deserve all this praise for bringing his clock to school? In a normal situation, he would have brought the clock to school.  His engineering teacher would have said, "Good job."  He would have put it away (NOT set it to go off), and that would have been that. No one outside his family and circle of friends and teachers would have known what he had created.  But mistakes were made. And so people who are pro-innovation (and face it, it's a good thing to be pro-innovation) and pro-student (regardless of race/ethnicity) jump into the political fray. Hashtag! Tweets! Facebook Posts! Media, media, media CIRCUS. Because mistakes were made, and a whole lot of people want to line up to say "It wasn't me! I didn't make the mistake!" Not this time anyway.

Thanks for readings, and please now resume your regularly scheduled lives, as if Ahmed had just showed the clock to his teacher, and that had been the end of it.    

Scotland: Cultural Differences Part 3 (Or Seven Things What Will Shock my Seven-Year Old When We Return to America)

First, they don't call the whole continent "America." Over here, the U.S. Canada, Mexico, it all seems to be combined into "America." when her friends ask "Where are you from?" Audrey says "America," but soon she'll have to be more specific.

Second, there are no school uniforms, and as a result, U.S. kids care a lot more about their clothes. Don't get me wrong, kids in Scotland do care about their clothes, especially (for seven year olds) tracksuits and party dresses, but they really only have 2 days to indulge that interest. The other five days are back to the pinafore, or skirt, or (very occasionally for girls) trousers.  The related item to this is that (shh, don't tell my Scottish friends) only old ladies iron in the United States. Everyone irons here. It's like a national pastime. We've speculated that it's related to the dearth of clothes dryers.

Practicing with her uniformed "Dance Team" in the schoolyard

Third, there is no blackcurrant juice. Only grape. I am not sure how blackcurrent managed to take hold in the UK but it is everywhere. You can have blackcurrent, orange, or apple. Those are your choices. 

Okay this is actually a novelty Ribena radio, but it was the best blackcurrent picture I could find!

Fourth, you don't have to walk nearly as much, and only if you choose your home very strategically will you be able to walk to school (especially in Tucson). On the plus side, you won't be walking up two steep hills in the rain and "fresh breeze" to school every day. 

Fifth, some holidays that are minimally celebrated here in the U.K. are a BIG deal in the U.S. I have already been prepping her for Halloween. Of course the rise of Halloween (and Dia de los Muertos in Tucson) means that something else has to go - the "Bonfire Night" fireworks (and yes, bonfire) celebrating Guy Fawkes attempt to blow up Parliament (generally, in Scotland, or, celebrating that he failed, depending upon your location in the UK and your politics) won't be a fixture anymore on November 5, nor will there be Christmas Light Night in mid-November. 

Bonfire Night fireworks

Sixth, it's called a bathroom or a restroom, not a toilet. And a faucet, not a tap.  And a hundred other language differences.

Seventh, no one can sing the lyrics from One Direction's latest album.  At least, I hope they can't. For everyone's sake.