Well, in just under a week I'll be back in the good old U.S. of A - back in the land of wide open spaces, free refills, proper burgers, and cable TV.  Where both family and my homies make their abode.  Where I'll know, after two months, just how much my bank account actually has in it.  It makes me want to sing...  "O give me a home...where the squirrels all roam...Where the deer and the road salters play...Where seldom is heard...a polysyllabic word...and the skies are at least not as cloudy all day as they are back in England..."

My horrible songwriting abilities notwithstanding, I'm pretty pumped about going home.  However, I'm realizing as I write this that now absolutely everyone I know is aware that I've gone to England to study, and they generally think this is the coolest thing ever, with the exception of Kevin, who doubly cursed my name for leaving him to fend for himself among the Cornerstone junior high youth group, and for daring to set foot on foreign soil.  No doubt he'll have some sort of molecular scanner equipped at his apartment door to make sure that I haven't brought any 'foreign horrible Britishness or some crap' back into the sacrosanct halls of his apartment.

But I digress.  I understand that many, many people will want to know what I've been up to.  Really.  I'm going to do the same thing to Erika about Israel when I see her.  I just don't want to repeat myself nonstop for three straight weeks.

So here they are, my answers to some very, very inevitable questions in no particular order:

1.  "So did you have a good time in England?"  Yes.  Of course I did.  You knew that, but what you want to know is how I had a good time in England.  That would take a considerably long time, depending on what questions follow.  And if there's one thing I do remember from home, it's that most people who read this page tend to glaze over after about reading two paragraphs of my articles.  I can only imagine what twenty-plus minutes of detailed conversation will do to them.

For your own safety, I suggest you have something more specific to ask me.  And several days' worth of food and water.  Otherwise you could well die of boredom/starvation/exposure.

2.  "What's England like?"  Sorry, but I can't condense 3000+ years of British culture and what it has produced in this, our post-modern era, and how all that has affected me into one pithy sentence.  It is beyond my rhetorical abilities.  No.  Perhaps several pithy sentences, but that's also unlikely.

Again, expect either a painfully long discussion or something uninteresting and noncommital, such as "It's pretty cool," or "I really liked it," or if you happen to be a close friend or family member - "English."

Ask something a bit more specific, and then you'll have a good chance of surviving my response, as in Question #1 (see above).

3.  "Do they really all sit down to have tea in the afternoon, eating cucumber sandwiches and scones, and drinking tea out of tiny mugs with their pinkies held out?"  Yes.  Yes they do.  It turns out that all of the ridiculous cultural stereotypes about Britain and its people that Americans laugh at are all completely true.  It turns out that every man in Scotland is a raging angry drunk with a kilt and a claymore and a penchant for stealing sheep.  Everyone in Ireland does nothing but drink Guiness and chase leprechauns all day while singing infectious Celtic folk songs.  And the English wear red coats all day, they all live in castles, are insufferably snooty and rich, and sit around having tea and talking about 'the deplorable state of affairs in the Colonies, what?'

And everyone drinks tea out of little lacy flowery mugs with their little fingers held out all funny.  I'll have to train myself to quit doing that at home.  That would look really stupid at Arby's.

4.  "How was school?"  Well, I can begin by saying it was rather...hmm...scholastic.  I did things like take classes.  And do work.  Like papers and stuff.  I did take both Latin and Old English, but please, don't ask me to compose a sentence for you right now to demonstrate my linguistic abilities.  It was all very interesting, but it was, well...school.

In short, like any student, I'm glad for a break.

5.  "Are you glad to be home?"  Someday, I wish someone would actually answer with "No.  In the past two months I have discovered a hitherto unknown but deep and abiding hatred for my family, friends, hometown, country and everything they stand for.  I resent being made to come back and wish I was not here, but back in the other country that I like better than this one."

Not that that answer applies to me at all, but I just wish someone would say it once, because it would be funny to watch.

So there you have it.  I really am looking forward to everything about being home, and I hope no one was too offended by this article.  If you were, I'm sure I'll get over it eventually.

(That last bit was irony.  They've got lots of that in Britain too.)