First impressions

We're here, and it's amazing.

After a very long flight we arrived at Heather's family's place in Newburyport, which is just outside Boston. It's a very small, old town and all the houses are beautiful: colonial style, pristine, and often three storeys high. It's also a wealthy town, very neat and tidy, with a quaint town centre that consists of a couple of streets of bookstores, gift shops, cafes, and clothing shops.

Today I went for a walk by myself to get a donut and coffee. The whole way into town I was chanting to myself "cars drive on the right, cars drive on the right", because I still can't get my head around that. I managed to get myself to the convenience store, which has a little Dunkin' Donuts shop right at the back. It's a very popular spot with cap-wearing old men, who sit and drink cheap coffee at their leisure. It's good to be indoors, since it was two degrees Celsius at 10:00 this morning.

Heather's relatives are great. Her aunt and her grandmother live together on one side of a duplex, and her cousin J. lives on the other. We're staying with J. The house, Heather tells me, is a couple of hundred years old. Heather's grandmother is gorgeous and funny and lovely. She and Heather look very alike, so now I feel that I know how Heather will look when she's old. Heather's aunt is lovely and funny too (humour seems to run in the family), and J. was very sweet this morning, when she hugged me and said "Welcome to the family."

So far, everything is wonderful, but cold. And little things are different--things that I didn't expect. Like, alcohol is really cheap (and you can get it at the convenience store), and shops give matchbooks away for free. I've got to run now, because we're going to see Heather's friend Kara in Salem, the home of witchy stuff. I'll put some photos up soon--within the next couple of days.