Yup! Me through and through – one of my best pictures of me!

Of that time when I lived there, it’s more snapshots and brief ‘moments’ really – although my parents do go back in the last few years in The Fall (he carries on some work there) and in 1999 I went too for a couple of weeks so I got to see all the old haunts.

As to fitting in? Do I really fit in anywhere? However I certainly don’t have the stereotypical British attitude to hating Americans that many people seem to have. As with all cultures there are some very nice things about America, and also some things I don’t like :\

I didn’t realise the userpic was of you, to be honest! Do you remember much about your time in America? How easy did you find it to fit in?

Good question!

When I was 5-6 (1977-78) we went out to live in America for year. My dad was working at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory which is part of Columbia University. We live on campus in upstate New York (west bank of the Hudson), which consisted of a ramshackle collection of buildings reminiscent of Womump (if you’ve read Graham Oakley’s Church Mice and the Moon – if you haven’t get it out from the library now!) in the grounds of an old house, Lamont Hall. During that year my brother and I went to Tapan Zee Elementary School, and yes, for a while, I did walk down lane through the woods with poion ivy to catch the yellow school bus.

That of course was after we’d moved into the house at Lamont from the flat we stayed in for a while down in Palisaides (then pretty poor and rundown but now a playground for the rich and famous), which was owned by the Achayan Yoga Research Institute until the two old ladies decided to sell up and move to California to be with Pundit Acharaya (he who wrote the book Brain Regeneration).

Honestly, I’m not making any of this up!! You glad you asked now…?

This userpic that I’m using is of me blowing on a marshmallow from that time. Really, I probably ought to write some of this down – there’s more than just a comment to a meme post here!