Oh, Silly Canada

Yesterday, though most of it was spent inside playing around on my computer, was a very interesting day. I learned a lot about both life in general, and Canada.

Canadian food, for example. Though I knew from earlier conversations that Canadian milk comes in bags, I do not believe I was quite prepared for the full reality of the trip to the grocery store. Where there are usually gallon jugs (okay, I can see the beginning of the problem here, what with our standard measurements, sure, but still...) there were... stacks, I guess? Of bags of bags of milk. I wish I'd brought my camera with me, but who remembers to bring their camera to the grocery store? Because these were not only plastic bags filled with three smaller bags for milk, but they were very, very brightly coloured. Okay, so, not neon. But what threw me off was that, if you walked a few aisles over into the, oh, feminine hygiene section... it would be the same colour scheme. And the same general style of bags. Canadian milk, you amuse me. At some point, I will probably drag the bag of 2% out of their fridge and take a proper picture of it, just so you can see how hot pink it is. (And, of course, those of you who are used to milk being in bags... this is for the benefit of at least two of the people from the US who were thoroughly confused when I tried to explain this last night. Hehehe.)

I'm also working on gathering evidence of the Kraft food monopoly up here. I thought it was weird enough that it was Kraft Dinner. The box says Kraft Dinner. Macaroni and cheese is in a small font in the lower-right of the box. (Incidentally, I also learned about eating it with ketchup yesterday. The rest of the Kraft Dinner line in If I Had a Million Dollars makes so much more sense now... wow. It's only taken me what, eight years?) By far, however, the most shocking thing was the peanut butter. There are but two brands of peanut butter up here. There is Skippy... and there is Kraft. (Yes... I took a picture of the peanut butter in their cupboards for this very purpose.) Kraft peanut butter. No Jif. No Peter Pan. Skippy... and Kraft. Peanut butter. Canada is a very strange place. I'm not even going to go into how it's like being in a French/English dictionary sometimes. As long as you're not looking at the box of Ritz Crackers for an accurate translation. Oh, Canada. Parts of this part up here feel totally like the towns around where I live, and yet your food manages to confuse the crap out of me. What gives?

Oh, and I've caught myself self-consciously avoiding my native pronunciation of both "out" and "about". I'd catch myself doing it strangely from time to time back home anyway... but here it's getting more often. My accent is weird anyway, I don't think I need to twist any more words out of their midwestern tint... yet here I am. Softening my "abowt" to something less foreign. Despite the fact that my pointing and laughing at their milk and giggling at the casual use of "eh" highlights me immediately as a silly American anyway. Oh, and the fact that I estimate everything in miles... and my sense of how warm things are in Celcius is about as off as it can be. At least I know what zero is. And that's about what it's been all week. (It's gonna be 50 when I get back to Chicago. Warm!)