What can I say, I just love being in the states. It gives me a neverending excuse to practice my appalling faux American accent. The Yanks love it. No, really, they do. Although I admittedly get a better reception with my British accent, even if there are multiple misunderstandings and/or complete lack of comprehension - yesterday I had a problem communicating what milk I wanted (2%? Semi? So complicated!) and a barwoman looked completely baffled when I ordered a Vodka, Lime and Soda (confusion which filtered through to the drink itself, which I suspect was not what I ordered, and as a result tasted rather like disinfectant). But I digress. Where was I. On yet another of my round-the-world friendship tours, I have flown to Boston, and driven down to New Haven, Connecticut where I am staying with Billy the chef and an all-American boys household. It is non-stop hilarity - we have one lacrosse teacher, a PE teacher and a chef. Three boys, one vast house, and plenty of those red plastic cups you see on American college films... Determined to show me the best the states has to offer, my first morning we headed out to a diner for breakfast, where I was presented with a menu listing so many different types of pancakes I didn't even know where to start. So I went patriotic (bananas, blueberries and strawberries), and succeeded in eating approximately 1/10th of the enormous portion I was given. Nothing like notching up your doggy bags before it's even hit 10am. Four of us then piled into the car to head out to New England (I am rapidly whipping through the different states), where we floated down Farmington river in large tires - either lazily or haphazardly, rapid-dependent - down. It was AWESOME (my favourite American word to overuse). Yet another waterbaby moment to keep me enthused!

The week has been yet another excuse to wind down, although I'm not entirely sure what I've now got to wind down from...coming from horizontal Belize, maybe this counts as cranking things up! I've been taken to watch films, taken to eat at a wonderful restaurant, shown round Yale university (not a patch on the old bricks of Cambridge though) and taken out bars so American I could have been forgiven for thinking that I had walked onto a film set (blonde girls and muscle men), running about in the sunshine and driving through gorgeous leafy glades which would undoubtedly be stunning in Fall, oh my goodness, I mean Autumn, AUTUMN. Look what's happening to me...

So now I really notch up the pace as, for the very first time in my 26 years, I head to New York...