I'm becoming British.

I’m feeling pretty British right now.  I’m sitting here on our couch, watching an X-Factor rerun (they love X-Factor here—probably more on this at a later date), then, a commercial for the very same frozen pizza I am currently eating (they love their frozen food here), I just flipped past a show called Porridge (definitely more on porridge later), and settled on Chopped UK episode (which we’ve seen already).  BUT I JUST FOUND NCIS!!!!!!!! OH MY GOSH IT HAS BEEN SO LONG GIBBS I HAVE MISSED YOUR HANDSOME FACE.  And I haven’t even seen this episode before.  American instincts have joyously returned.

But a word about porridge.  I had read about British people eating porridge in Charles Dickens and Jane Austen novels, and I imagined it was some white sloop made of who-knows-what, maybe newspaper.  Not until I came here did I realize that porridge is, in fact, oatmeal.  Who knew.  (Is this common knowledge?  I don’t know.)  Ashley and I went way overboard on our porridge eating.  We ate it everyday for breakfast—hers plain or with honey, mine with peanut butter or brown sugar.  We would eat it for dinner sometimes or as a snack on the weekends.  We talked about how much we loved oatmeal, how we could live on it.  So delicious and nutritious.  Then, the unexpected happened (well, someone may have foreseen this…).  The other morning, I made myself a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast.  I mixed in the peanut butter and raised a spoonful to my mouth…but I couldn’t do it.  I just stared at it and thought of lumpy papier mache paste.  Something inside me had just turned off and I could consume no more oatmeal.  Even the knowledge that I had just mixed in approximately 4 pounds (currency, not weight) worth of precious Skippy would not sway me.  I couldn’t eat it.  I later admitted this to Ashley, who said the same exact thing had happened to her a few days before.  All the oatmeal we had bought in bulk sits in our cabinet, untouched.  I guess we’ll have to make cookies. 

Surprisingly, I have more to say about oatmeal.  I had assumed that porridge = oatmeal.  However, last weekend I learned from Will’s cousin’s friend’s husband that porridge is oats with milk and gruel is oats with water.  Guess which one I’ve been eating.  GRUEL.  I’VE BEEN EATING GRUEL.  I’m feeling pretty British right now.