Annette eats a biscuit...

... but Captain Flash is too busy guarding the Tim Tams. Since Captain Flash can't eat, this didn't bother him so much.

One of the best things about staying at the Clay Corner Inn is that I really feel at home - it's much more like staying at a house (with a very obliging hostess) than staying at a hotel. I just nipped downstairs for a cup of tea, and Mary (the girl who lives here with her husband and runs the place) was in the kitchen. She is babysitting two small boys this evening, and was baking biscuits in the oven. For those of you not familiar with American terminology, biscuit to an American does not equal Tim Tam or even Oreo. To an American, those are cookies. To an American, biscuit has a completely different meaning. The best way I can describe an American biscuit is as a sweet, VERY fluffy scone. Mary very kindly offered me one, since I had never eaten one before. It was tasty. Apparently, if you eat a biscuit with gravy, that is southern food.

Today I went into the lab and actually did some experimental work. I am working with a girl named Raquel on measuring surface tensions. Today was all about learning to use the equipment (and giving up on finding an interfacial tension value for chloroform in glycerol from the literature). We will use the machine again tomorrow and hopefully make better progress.

Today I also went for a wander around campus on my way to lunch. Unless you want burger king, you pretty much have to wander all the way downtown for food. Well - 10 or 15 minutes, so that's not too bad. One sight I'm getting used to is people in military uniforms wandering about campus. VT has some history as a military institution, and they have military people studying there still. As I passed all the parked cars, I also observed that people are very open about their political beliefs: plenty of Obama stickers, some McCain stickers, some stickers for campaigns for the house or the senate, and a numberplate: "PROLIF3".

Roads in the USA are also a very puzzling thing. Not only do they all drive on what I think is the wrong side of the road, but roundabouts here are few and far between. Instead, what they have is 4-way stop signs, in abundance. The best way to try an understand the 4-way stop sign is to picture a roundabout... without the roundabout part. When I asked how it works, I was told that the rule is that if two cars get there at the same time, you give way to the right. In their defence, the Americans I asked also think this is a stupid system.

One final note: at one point of a Pizza Hut ad for their new lasagne, there is a subtitle describing the lasagne as "vivacious". I love American TV.