Turning a house into a home

It's true what they say: portions are bigger in America.

The flight was pants (I'm going to retain a few anglicisms for the time being). Having been served Chicken Tikka for breakfast, I made it through half of the Dark Knight and about two thirds of Dr No - my attempt at an escapist binge. Graphic violence and spicy Indian food at 40,000 feet don't mix - I think I blacked out for the middle portion of the journey. Soggy sandwiches accompanied by *no alcohol* - not a drop - defined the remainder. Is prohibitionism on the rise over the mid-Atlantic? Miserable. I'm surprised that British Airways lost only £164 million in the last quarter!

We rode direct from JFK to New Haven. The horses weren't spared. We pulled up alongside the Hall of Graduate Studies around 3pm, grabbed room keys and unloaded. The dorms are strange. A 'semi-private bathroom' set-up means two rooms with a bathroom in the middle, connecting doors on both sides of the shower. In principle there's really nothing to stop someone walking in on you butt naked and on the crapper. I guess that's how the firmest bonds of friendship are forged.

A tad dejected by my new abode (it was grimy when we arrived), I trundled to my parents' hotel.

But then...

We saw Yale. And stunning it is. The Beinecke Library, Harkness Tower, Hillhouse Avenue - Oxbridge meets Disney. There seems to be a penchant, verging on fetish, here for cathedrals which aren't actually cathedrals. They just can't get enough of them. The Sterling Memorial Library: a cathedral. Yale Law School: a small cathedral. Payne Whitney Gymnasium: erm, a cathedral (and one modeled on Liverpool Anglican of all places). How my old joke about turning King's Chapel into a block of flats has come home to roost!

Come Monday evening I'd made my first friend. Stuart, of Ramsgate, has just arrived from Cornell to start his second, yes second, PhD. With plenty in common, we knocked back a few in an Irish bar then hit a watering hole off the Green (mugging central, he tells me). Tequila shots to finish. As a barrister I heard in Southwark Crown Court (only observing!) last week put it, with rank disapproval, there were some sore heads in the morning. My first night in the New World was one to remember :S

Yesterday was spent fixing up the room. Walmart served its all-encompassing purpose admirably; Britons take heed: that shop *will* consume the planet. Also, I am the now proud owner of a Blackberry. With a new phone, I am born again. Text me numbers! Mine's on Facebook.

This ends, devoted reader, my first update from the State of Connecticut. Not exactly an Alistair Cooke missive I'm afraid, but give me time. I'll improve my game.

Forgive me too for not emailing much yet. With family around I've had only sporadic access to a computer. That will change soon.

Next stop, Rhode Island!