Save the Galaxy

A few weeks ago, my boyfriend and I tracked down a Star Wars Battle Pod. The reviews of the game were good and since I'm a fan of anything Star Wars, we thought we'd give it a go. It's an arcade game, so unless you've got a lot of money to spare, you might want to find it at an arcade. In the UK, this is mostly at Tenpin and Hollywood Bowl, and in the US and Canada, it's at Dave & Buster's.

It's actually an enclosed pod, which is nice, since you can immerse yourself in it more. My boyfriend and I swapped off playing each level - he's better than I am at arcade-style games, so he had a higher score than me on most, but I beat the Takodana level when he didn't, so I was rather proud of that accomplishment. The battles are all famous ones from the films - Battle of Yavin, Battle of Hoth, Battle of Endor, Battle of Takodana, so while you do participate in destroying both Death Stars, there's still a lot of variety.

There's a bonus level at the end called Vader's Revenge that isn't really part of the storyline, because it takes place after the destruction of the first Death Star - you play as Vader and you're trying to prevent the Rebels from taking a piece from the Death Star's remains and you destroy the Millennium Falcon in the process. I couldn't beat that level, but my boyfriend got a top score on it. Perhaps I just subconsciously couldn't bring myself to destroy the Falcon?

The game is on a rail system, so there isn't any freedom to explore the level, but that's rather to be expected of an arcade game. And since you're participating in very specific events that take place in a small area of space (or atmosphere, depending), it makes sense for it to be set up that way as well. I thought the game was a lot of fun - it's exciting and fast-paced and you get to participate in some of the most important events in the Star Wars franchise. At least, of the ones that appear in the films.

New Accents

Just a month after Meghan Markle became the Duchess of Sussex upon marrying Prince Harry, already it's making the news that she seems to be adopting a British accent. I did watch the clip and she hasn't - she's just got a slightly British cadence to her speech, but her pronunciation still sounds American to me.

It's always fascinated me how some people can be really good with accents and others not at all. My best friend is on one end of that spectrum - she lived in New Zealand for six years and has no hint of a Kiwi accent, although she does now use a lot of New Zealand English. On the opposite end of that spectrum, two of my friends from the UK moved to Florida in secondary school and within six months had completely lost their British accents, although they still retained a lot of British English words and phrases for a long time.

So I think it would be completely understandable if the Duchess of Sussex did develop a British accent - she lives in the UK now and is surrounded by mostly British people. It would only be natural for her to pick up the accent. Some people pick up accents quickly, without even meaning to. And really, I don't think there's anything wrong with just wanting to, either, whether that's to fit in or just for fun.

I can pick up a new accent just by visiting a place for a week or so. My brain just wants to imitate what it's hearing - pronunciation is also usually the first thing I pick up when learning a new language for this reason. My grammar and vocabulary will be terrible, but I will sound really good speaking it. My brain just wants to imitate what I'm hearing around me. Sometimes this gets absorbed into my already rather hotch-potch idiolect and sometimes it's temporary.

Bustle has a really nice article (here) about 'wandering accents' and what they mean. Apparently imitating someone's accent is an act of empathy and just means that you want to understand and be understood.  And apparently you pick up accents more easily and learn languages better if you're a musician - well, that explains a lot. Thank you mum and dad for violin, piano, and singing lessons when I was a kid.

There is a downside, however - sometimes people think you're mocking them or will mock you for it (like people did to Madonna when she moved to the UK). I often feel really self-conscious about it for this reason and will really only speak normally (well, normally for me, at least) around my boyfriend and my best friend. Usually I'll try to be more aware of how I'm speaking so at least I don't do it by accident. I began speaking more precisely when I taught English in Japan, so that my lower-level students could understand me more easily. Thus, any accent I speak in tends to be a bit over-enunciated, including my 'native' one.

This actually results in me sometimes being asked where I'm from, even in my home country. Oddly, most people who ask me this most often think I'm from Russia, although I have no idea why. I've never even been there and I've done the Ancestry DNA thing - I have no Russian heritage, either. Although I was pleased to discover that I'm a lot more Celtic than I had thought. Perhaps I should learn Welsh or Irish next, then?

Strawberry Festival

My boyfriend and I have been trying to go to a local strawberry festival for years. We would hear about it or see signs for it a few weeks after it had happened and would say that we'd try to make it next year, but then the same thing would happen. So this year, finally, we were able to go. I was rather disappointed, however.

I had been expecting an actual festival, with a variety of vendors, selling strawberries, strawberry jam, preserves, pie, etc. Instead, it was a single tent where members of a local church were making strawberry shortcake. So, less a festival and more a fundraiser.

The strawberry shortcake was good, but honestly it wasn't any better than what my boyfriend could have made at home (although to be fair, he is an excellent cook, so it may still be above average strawberry shortcake). Especially since we had to go home for a while to ride out a sudden downpour and then head back out and try again later in the day. A lot of effort and expectations for somewhat expensive strawberry shortcake.

Well, if we're able to go the festival next year, at least I'll know and won't be anticipating lots of strawberry everything, and I'll just be ready for a good strawberry shortcake. Since it was hot and humid outside after the rain, it was refreshing, although it did make me very thirsty.

Learning a Language for Travel

With English now such a global language, should you bother learning a language for travel? My answer to this question is always 'yes, absolutely', but I love languages (I speak six, although I'm only truly fluent in English) and learning them, so I may be a bit biased. Sometimes it's just not possible to learn an entire language for a week-long trip. But while learning the local language may not be necessary to have a great trip, it can make things a lot more fun.

Some of my favourite experiences travelling have only occurred because I spoke the language. I lived in Japan for several years after university and got to meet some wonderful people there that I never would have been able to talk to without knowing Japanese. The train conductor in Nikko who was so excited to have foreigners on his train that he wanted to take a picture with us. The elderly couple hiking a mountain with their cat in a sling who helped us find our way back to the path we needed. Another elderly couple out hiking who gave use cookies because we were foreign and had travelled all this way to visit their country. The Hiroshima bombing survivor who wrote the memorial poem on a monument that we'd been admiring and who told us stories about the war and about not being able to use English terms in baseball. Only that last conversation had any English at all and that was because I was translating for my mum and aunt.

I've since moved back home and now go with my boyfriend on big international trips - big because of the length and the number of places we visit, not because of how war away we go. Some of our 'big' trips have been rather close to home. Our last trip was to Scandinavia (with a quick day trip to Tallinn). Since there wasn't going to be any way that I could learn Finnish, Estonian, Swedish, and Norwegian all before the trip, this ended up being the first time in my life I'd been to another country without knowing its language first.

I was able to pick up a few words here and there as we travelled, but for the most part had to use exclusively English. Fortunately, nearly everyone everywhere we went spoke excellent English and when they didn't, the interaction didn't really require much speaking (such as buying my new favourite skagen sandwich at a convenience store). This experience really just made me want to learn all four languages more - if I hear a language a lot, I want to learn it so I can understand it. I ended up learning Japanese at university because a friend got me started watching anime. I started teaching myself Korean for similar reasons (Korean dramas) even before I met my boyfriend (whose parents were both born in South Korea).

Now that I've got personal experience with both options, I think I still prefer making sure I know at least some of the language beforehand. Sure, it's easier to rely on English, since so many people speak it across the world, but I find it to be a courtesy to at least try to speak the local language, even if it's only a few phrases. It feels wrong to me to go somewhere else and then make them accommodate me and my inability to speak their language. Even just trying to read a phrase from a guide book can go along way towards people appreciating your efforts, even if they have to speak English with you anyway.

Tree Planting

My boyfriend ordered five trees to plant in our yard months ago - two Chinese chestnuts, a chestnut, and two persimmons - and because it had been too cold to plant, they sat in buckets in the middle of our kitchen floor for most of spring since they'd arrived.

We finally got to plant them in May. I'd not planted trees before, so it was definitely an interesting experience. There's a lot more to it than what they show you in tree-planting ceremonies.

That tree is already technically planted - they're just adding a bit of soil on top. You don't see the meticulous measurements that you have to take to make sure the tree will have enough room for its roots as it grows (for the trees we planted, we're talking 30-40 feet). You don't see the digging of the holes, the mixing up of soil and coconut coir, then the actual planting and pouring all the soil back in. It took us a few hours to get all five of them done, but it was very satisfying at the end to see our little saplings properly rooted in our back garden.

It'll take a while for them to grow big enough to produce anything, but our garden is already nice for having more trees in it. They're already visibly taller than when we planted them.

Spring Tulips

Now that the weather has finally turned warmer and it's spring in more than just name only, I went with my mum to the Holland Tulip Festival in Holland, Michigan. Of course, it was a gloomy day, with cloudy skies threatening rain, but I thought this was fine - I like the rain, it wasn't too hot, and I didn't get sunburnt. And it didn't actually end up raining, so it all worked out in the end.

Holland, as its name implies, was founded by Dutch Americans (in 1847) who emigrated from the Netherlands fleeing poor economic conditions and seeking religious freedom. Today, there's still a large population of people with Dutch ancestry and the town celebrates that heritage every year with the Tulip Festival and other Dutch-themed attractions that bring in loads of tourists.

It was rather appropriate that I was with my mum, as it was actually Mother's Day in the US the day we went. It was lovely to have the day to spend with her. Since we don't live in the same place, having that kind of mother/daughter time isn't possible as often as I would like.

Obviously the main thing I wanted to see was the tulips. The city has tulips planted all over, so you can see them any time when they're blooming. They line the streets and there's a park in the centre of town where there are loads of different colours and varieties planted all in the same place.

The flowers were lovely. I don't know a lot about them, so their names didn't mean anything to me, but it was nice seeing all of the different kinds. While we were eating lunch (traditional Dutch food, including croquettes, which I'd tried before in Japan, but had never known their origin), there was a speaker talking about how to properly care for the flowers. My mum has much more of a green thumb than I do (I tend to kill plants - except my lucky bamboo, which I've actually managed to keep alive so far), so it was more practical information for her, but still interesting to listen to. I never knew so much went in to caring for plants (probably why I am not good with them).

Tulips weren't the only part of the festival. There were stalls selling Dutch food and souvenirs, a windmill park, a Dutch village (for children), and a parade. People dressed up in traditional Dutch costume, including wooden shoes. There was even a band performing in the parade that marched in clogs.

Now I need to go to the Netherlands. My mum's been there with my dad, but I've not been yet. The Netherlands is actually my first stop on a trip with my boyfriend this autumn, but since the tulips are a spring flower we won't be able to see them in Europe, so it was nice that I still got to see them this year with my mum, a little bit closer to home.

Birthday Cake

Normally, my boyfriend makes me a cake from scratch for my birthday, but since this year we're both trying to eat healthier and in past years, we've ended up with so much leftover cake that we were eating it for weeks, we decided that this year we'd just do single slices.

We decided to visit the Cake Bake Shop in Broad Ripple, since it's won awards at the Cake & Bake Show in Earl's Court, London, been featured on the Food Network, and on Oprah's O List. Even though the cake slices are rather expensive, we thought we'd give it a try.

The shop itself was surprisingly thoroughly decorated. I've been in plenty of bakeries round the world and they're generally a counter and a glass case and maybe posters or paint to a theme, but nothing like this. There was stuff everywhere. Flowers, china, chandeliers, and it was all very, very pink. There were photos on the wall by the door of all of the celebrities who had eaten there, including Matt Damon and Josh Gad. It was rather posh and I felt a bit under-dressed in my jeans. Even the umbrellas in the outdoor seating area had pink flowers.

Of course, I had to try the chocolate cake that won at the Cake & Bake Show, which is now named Gwendolyn's Famous Earl's Court Chocolate Cake, after the venue. I'm not normally the biggest chocolate cake fan - I often find it to be a bit too rich - but I couldn't come all the way to the Cake Back Shop and not have the one that won. My boyfriend wanted to try the Oprah's 'O' List Mint Chocolate Chip Cake, but they were out, so he had the lemon cake instead. No fancy name for that one - it's just called Lemon Cake.

Personally, I preferred the lemon cake over the award-winning chocolate one, but I always prefer fruit-flavoured cake over chocolate. My requested birthday cake every year is strawberry with cream cheese icing. The chocolate cake I ordered was delicious to be sure, but I'm not the best judge of chocolate cake quality - it was very rich and even though I drank an entire glass of milk I still felt very thirsty afterwards, but the cake slice was so big that I was too full to really drink anything more, so it was a bit uncomfortable for a while. I ought to have eaten less and saved the rest for later.

If we go again, I'd like to try either the Raspberry Champagne Cake or the Carrot Cake - and hopefully my boyfriend would get to try the mint chocolate chip that he'd wanted.