Downtown Lawrence is like the American Dream – shops selling patchwork and antiques and beautiful things; and everything decked out in the colours of the local university sporting teams -all known as the Jayhawks. Even the Police cars have cartoon characters of Jayhawks painted on the side.
There are genuine fraternity houses on the hill near the University of Kansas and today, a Saturday, students having cook outs on their front lawns. Navigation is easy as all the streets one way are named after US States and all the streets running in the other direction are numbered. I am staying on the corner of Ohio and 10th.
About a kilometre away, the strip mall is more like the American Nightmare – huge barn-like stores with names like “Hobby Lobby” and “Party America”, lots of cracked concrete and more pickup trucks than I’ve ever seen in one place. The drive-in bank autotellers are strangely fascinating.
Here there are squirrels playing in the trees, pavement bricks stamped with “Lawrence Kansas”, and the cars only have rear number plates. The trees and gardens are bare, but there are tulips and daffodils beginning to show. The fields outside Lawrence are all dry in a way that I am only ever used to seeing in our Australian high summer.
I’ve learned that one “rents” a bicycle, not “hires” one; that I actually do say “G’day” as my normal greeting and that asking whether there are “vego” options on a menu will confuse people. I’ve learned that it is not easy for me to adapt to riding a bicycle on the right hand side of the road – I keep looking in all directions just in case someone is coming at me , and I’ll often look at a car’s driver and be astounded (again) to see an eight year old there. I also have to remind myself to walk on the other side on foot paths and going up stairs.
I’ve learned that I need to understand a bit more about Electricity, as I have spent a couple of days trying to work out why my PCs and appliances all went flat. I isolated it to the Australian to US power adapter and ordered three from California via express post yesterday. Imagine my horror when I discovered this morning that an adapter lent by another Australian guest caused the same problem.
After spending six or so hours researching and phoning around this morning, I rode to Uni computers – pronounced “You an I”, not “Uni” – where I had resigned myself to buying an Acer Aspire One. No power inverter or replacement power brick could reach me by Monday when my meetings start, and I’m a couple of days behind already. Imagine my surprise when the computer guy pulled out a universal cable to connect to my power brick and it worked. Does it have Magic Voltage Converting wire in it or something? I don’t know, just am grateful that it only cost me $15.
I seem to have avoided jetlag. I took travel writer Peter Greenberg’s advice, How to avoid jetlag – except the minute I took on the plane I ate and slept as though I was already on Kansas time. Staying awake on the 11pm – 9am flight from Perth to Tokyo took some doing, but was worth it.
The OLE Project meeting starts on Monday at 8am and I expect to either be at the meeting or interviewing people for my thesis all week without a break. (Well except for Wednesday and Library Camp Kansas ).
