Another day, another hotel

There's a bit of a blogging slowdown at the moment with another move, now our third hotel since arriving here last week. We were in the Best Western from Saturday until today and it was not at all bad, though the sofa-bed was so uncomfortable that we had to sleep with the mattress on the floor last night; and the wireless internet access continually switched itself off, which made my life in particular less happy. But our new hotel is by far the best yet and I hope we will be able to stay here until we move into our house in mid October; this one even has the luxury of a manager's special in the evening, with a free drink and appetizers -- this is a real treat. And a hot breakfast in the morning too to look forward to.

Meanwhile, I have taught my second class, and was interested today to discover that Noddy is not known in America, which made it less easy than I had expected to use my analogy for the evangelists' editorial fatigue which is based on the way that the Noddy TV series updated Enid Blyton's appalling use of "gollywog" to the inoffensive "goblin" but in the process ruined the ending of one of Blyton's stories (because gollywogs are made of cloth and goblins of wood) -- I can explain in more detail if anyone is interested.

It is still warm here, and everyone walks around campus in what I would think of as summer clothes. And our major new American experience of the day was our girls' first day at Elementary School, which seemed to go very well, and they are already picking up the lingo more quickly than we are, and are making friends and loving it all. Our minor new American experience of the day was scanning our own shopping at Food Lion, with a touch-screen control panel, and an electronic signature pad. And yes, it is a lot cheaper than Harris Teeter; fancy our having stumbled across the most expensive place first.