Tea, lager and laughs.

Never in my life could I ever have imagined that I would be erecting my Christmas tree with two Englishmen while drinking tea and listening to Wham's "Last Christmas," but there we were. Last night Kev and Ben assisted me in putting up my (regrettably) plastic tree. Now, because I'm a bad blogger and don't update with as much fervor as I intended when I began this thing, there has been no mention of these two since my travel entry. To make a long story short: The Englishmen were in Cork for about a week looking for work when I arrived. Their plan was to secure jobs, a flat and a new life away from England. After about a week and a half of desperately searching for work, they said bullocks to it and decided to do something crazy with the savings they had left. So, not but a few days after I returned from my trip I received a Facebook message from Ben stating that he and Kev were in Dublin airport waiting to board a plane for San Francisco. I urgently suggested that they, at some stage, come and see me in sunny C-town. After about a month or so in California and a hedonistic stop in Vegas, they arrived at Hancock International on Nov. 15.
Since then, we've spent many a night swimming in lager and chatting endlessly about the differences between our cultures. I've introduced them to my co-workers and my "home" friends, and both groups have given rave reviews of the duo. On Thanksgiving I took on the epic task of preparing my mother's traditional meal for the first time. Considering they'd never experienced a Thanksgiving, I thought it only proper to prepare for them what I've had every year of my life. It came out almost as good as mum's and I think they enjoyed it. They asked me exactly what Thanksgiving meant and why we celebrated it as a nation. After bumbling through an answer about Pilgrims and Indians and Columbus, I sheepishly looked it up on Wikipedia (yes Steph, Wikipedia) and gave them a semi-appropriate answer. The bottom line as far as tradition goes, I said, was that we were to eat a gut-busting amount of food and watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.. both of which we succeeded in doing. After the meal, we settled in for a few episodes of the British version of The Office. The blending of cultures was beautiful. Haha.
So, now they're here until Dec. 14. I intend to take them to Niagara Falls on Saturday if the weather cooperates... or even if not, I think I'm going to try to make the journey regardless. They will be able to say they went to Canada too, maybe that's an accomplishment in England... here it's merely a burden. I hope to give a full and proper reflective entry after they've departed, but I wanted to try and get down some of the stuff I know I'm going to forget. It's funny that, no matter what the situation, once you get into a routine, things seem to be so normal and mundane even though the experience is anything but. Hopefully the feeling of this experience will remain, even if the details have gone.