First Impressions 1

The day I arrived, Heathrow had just been surrounded by green activists protesting a planned expansion of the airport. There's a huge ecological wave here and because travel is so cheap, one of the main points the greens fight for is towards a general cut back on the amount of air travel and therefore, the amount of pollution caused by planes.

It sounds weird to me, because, well, we don't fly that much. But also because in the first 2-3 days, I could point out so many other ways people could diminish their footprint on earth, which I'm sure nobody even points out.

First: Washing machines take forever to wash things here. I swear. I have the tiniest washing machine you have ever seen. I think I'd have to cut up my bedsheet to wash it. As a test wash, I put in my new tea towels and put it on quick wash. It took almost an hour. And water, water, water...

Another thing: Packaging. I bought some frango de forno, it came wrapped and wrapped and wrapped in so much stuff!

More: everyone here, as in the US, just HAS to have the latest and greatest, laptop/iPod/mobile phone/MP3 player/Wii/whatever. When I said that I don't really need a TV (LCD or Plasma please - you can't find a normal TV here) or DVD player for now, people looked at me funny.

Anyway... so the brits take this stuff almost as seriously as US college students.. but not really.