Cross-Cultural

The past three weeks, we have had the honor of having Gary as our guest. When the kids got home from school on Gary's first day with us, I introduced him to the kids as "Uncle Gary". With a smirk and a flirty point, Daegan said, "Not for three more weeks!" So, now, the kids can call him Uncle.

It has been fun having him here. (Mac and I are going to miss him tomorrow at breakfast). It has been fun to see my baby sister in love. It has also been a slight cross-cultural experience. I'm sure it has been much more of a shock for him than for us.

A bullet list (for you, Camille) to keep track of some differences:

• First morning I asked him how he took his coffee, he said, "two sugars". Hmmmm?


• The bathroom is the toilet or the bog


• Cricket scores need to be checked in the morning, just like Nascar results!


• A family favorite, that will forever be a phrase in our house, when you want to go take a nap, you call it a "do-do". That means something totally different over here? And a diaper is called a "nappy". So confusing!


• A diary is a dayplanner/schedule/calendar


• When he says he needs to do laundry, he means dump all his clothes into the washer without separating colors and whites (oh, wait, that wasn't cross cultural, just a guy thing!)


• When he asks for tea, he means hot, not iced!


• Khaki is not a type of pants or a color. I'll leave it at that.


• A spanking is a hiding


• A pacificer is a dummy


• A trunk is boot and the hood is a bonnet


• A truck is a bucky


• Caramel is caramel - you can't see the difference, but my pronunciation has two syllabels and his has three.

We still get to hang out with Gary's family for another week and I know there will be others that I will add as I think of them or as we discover them.