Monday, April 02, 2007

The Expat Questionnaire

Katie, an American living in Glasgow has tagged me with the following expat questionnaire. I'm pretty tired at the moment so don't know how clever I'll be with my answers but I'll give it a shot. I'm also exchanging the word country for Glasgow, as I haven't been outside of the city all that much as I've only been here 5 months.

5 things you love about your new country(city/Glasgow).

- the abundance of fair trade and organic products

- the whisky & Guinness (regular, not the extra cold)

- the consumer awareness of the carbon footprint

- Scottish Pride

- the heartfelt generosity of those I have met

4 things you miss about your old country (city/Vancouver).

- being able to buy a pound of whole bean coffee

- a big jar of all natural extra crunchy peanut butter with the only ingredient is 'peanuts', no palm oil, no added salt or icing sugar, just plain peanuts. Did I mention the big jar?

- a tumble dryer so my towels are fluffy

- efficient low flow toilets (even with the 50 gallons of rushing water there is still a wad of toilet paper that refuses to go down the drain)

3 things that annoy you about your new country

- walking past vomit on the sidewalk on a Monday morning

- that odd smell down the block. It's somewhere between sewage and stale garbage (I can't figure it out as the bins get emptied every day and I've yet to see a sewer grate.

- why they insist on the over packaging of produce in the grocery store, but the plastic wrappers and containers are not recyclable here yet.


2 things that surprise you about your new country

- All the grocery store chains have online shopping and affordable home delivery. It's completely worth it paying 3.99 to shop via my laptop curled up under the covers and have someone else lug 8 bags of groceries up 4 flights of stairs.

- they really do wear kilts and play bagpipes here on a regular basis.

1 thing that you'd really miss if you had to leave your new country.

- the architectural beauty of Glasgow

6 comments:

The Moon Topples said...

I keep posting this comment, but I've seen this meme three times and I find it intriguing in each instance.

I think you should resolve to do this meme again once you've been there a year, and see if your answers are any different.

Chris said...

Well a year for me will be Oct 18th, or should it be a year from this post? You may need to remind me. Will you still be around or will I have bored you by then?

Squirmy Popple said...

I walked past four vomit puddles on Sunday afternoon and at least as many smashed bottles of Buckfast. I wonder if there's a correlation...

The Moon Topples said...

I imagine I'll still be around if I'm still blogging.

But I highly doubt I'm going to remind you to redo a meme in October. I can't even remember stuff about my own life for that long.

Cursed Tea said...

Hi Chris

I too was tagged by Katie. I found it quite a challenging set of questions. The whole expat thing is an odd existence. When I was home in Scotland for a year (and D was in the US - thanks to immigration!!) I found I missed a lot about America and no one at home understood because their idea of America was so stereotyped (not surprisingly) and that meant they had very little concept of what I was wittering on about. Of course missing my new husband was probably making things 1000 times worse...

I'm glad you appreciate Glasgow's architecture - its often overlooked!! I love the red red sandstone of the tenement flats.

Best Wishes
Kirsty

abigail said...

Hey, on the peanut butter thing... have you found Lupe Pintos on Great Western Road? The American-Mexican deli? It's right round the corner and I think they have big jars of peanut butter - can't promise it'll be all natural though. The other place you can try is Roots and Fruits at Kelvinbridge...

I miss PB too - the two times I've eaten it here in Asia, I've been violently ill - not sure why but I'm not willing to experiment again...