A Tailgating Party; a Football Game; and an American Boy

Friday lunch I had Filipino Sisig, which contained pig ears, snout and belly. Yum.

In the evening, we hot-footed it over to New Haven where I caught up with a an old friend from my Japan days and where I met her little boy for the first time. I was shocked by how American he sounded. The Boy thinks I'm being an idiot when I say this, but I don't mean to sound as dumb as it does. I just mean that I was shocked to hear a perfect American voice come out of a three-year old body. I've not interacted much with kids and when they're that young, they tend to speak in pidgin and on the whole have had British accents. This little one did not and came out with perfectly formed sentences in an American accent. I was as surprised this time as when I met a distant cousin who had grown up in Belfast. She was Chinese but had a thick Northern Irish accent. My mind was boggled.

The other thing about little kids is that they don't like having a lie-in and they don't like being quiet. They like to play loudly. When my friend, A asked her little American Boy whether he could be a bit quieter, as the Boy and I were still sleeping, his response was, 'No, I can't'. I'm hoping/guessing he meant it in a literal rather than obnoxious way.

I went to my first tailgating party on Saturday morning, which involved drinking pre-noon before the Yale-Harvard (American) football game. When A mentioned the party earlier in the week, I was confused. The premise is that you stand around the boot of a car, and eat and drink in a car park before some kind of sporting event.
A: 'Wait. Did you google 'tailgating party'?'
Me: 'Yeah, it sounds hard core.'
A: 'Well, this is a little different. It's actually at someone's house but they live really close to the stadium.'

The thing I just couldn't get my head around was why we weren't allowed in the house. It is the end of November, after all. I guess that's just my British brain being non-cooperative.

Again, I learnt a lot about America. In NYC, I have noticed the NYU security cars, but had just thought them strange and moved on. They exist at Yale too and they are for the safety of the student body. Imagine, Cardiff University or SOAS with on-demand, door-to-door taxi services to ensure your safety. Or cars that patrol the town to ensure that students don't get hurt. Neither can I, but that's what they have here in the States. The good here is really good.

Yale got tonked, by the way.