Our first week !

So here we are just over a week now and settling in nicely, i think ! I have been to the US so many times, but always as a tourist. Now i am a resident, or "Resident Alien" as the wonderful people at the Visa office like to label at us. However, i do kinda like saying "i'm a Resident Alien". Has a certain "ring" to it, don't you think?

So how is it different now?.... well everything is bigger and even bigger, Bigger, BIGGER..... "Texan style". The latest Dallas modern motto is "Think Big, live large!", quite fitting i think.

 

 

I notice in particular the food portions are bigger! OMG we went to the Olive Garden (Italian Restaurant Chain) the other eveing and ordered 2 standard main courses and a pizza for the Munchkin and they give you free salad (a huge bowl enough to feed 4) and free refills on drinks !!! it just kept coming and coming. The whole lot was just $35. That's about 27 euro's - you wouldn't even get a sniff of a steak at home for that. And we were rightly stuffed i tell ya - the BIG plates of pasta just couldn't be finished. The salad would have been a meal for the Munchkin and i alone, that is.... if she ate bloomin salad, ha.... not a chance..... toddler feeding - don't get me started, maybe that's a post for another day.

 

 

Anyway, so BIGGER is where i was going with this. BIG cars for example too. So we needed a rental car while we settled in and the smallest the Soldier could get from our buddies at Hertz was a Toyota Camry, jaysus !! I saw it and immediately said to him, "you have to bring that back", he said "I can't, it's the smallest they've got, we're in Texas now baby!", he was only short of the Cowboy hat on his head to go with the big grin on his face. So i got in and gave it a go, was dead nervous, had never driven automatic before, but it actually went OK, and there were no domestics in transit either. Munchkin was in the back and just kept saying "Mammy's driving, Mammy's driving", so cute ! As for the left foot, it's bye bye clutch for-e-v-e-r! When i get back home, i'm immediately changing over to automatic, my god what was i doing all those years when i could hav ebeen relaxing in a "bumper car" navitaging Irish roads and traffic. Hilarious! :-)