It's been HOT!

I'm guessing we brought the desert heat with us. Other than the first week we were here when it was mostly cloudy, it's been beautiful. The past week and a half has been the hottest the UK has seen in almost 3 years. It's been in the upper 80's and hit the low 90's a few times. People are going crazy trying to find fans and portable a/c units, since they aren't built into houses here. The BX has ordered extra shipments of fans, and they're gone within hours. The buildings on base are hot too, since they don't have a/c. Our building is a nice and cool 60 degrees, and we've had people hanging around who wouldn't normally visit, we're guessing they come by to cool off. I bought one tower fan for the bedroom, because Aiden gets hot when he sleeps, and since it's light so late into the evening, I can't leave the windows open very far. We're in the small group of people who like the heat. Plus they've been having water play at the CDC on Thursdays, and Aiden doesn't give me a hard time about going those days. He's still adjusting to the CDC, it's getting a little easier, but we still have days where he cries when I leave. Then again, he cried the other day when I got there 30 min early and he didn't want to leave before he got to play outside.

We're going to go to the base party thing on Sat. It seems odd to celebrate our independence from a country while living in that country, but apparently the brits don't mind our fireworks, they come too! They have a big carnival type thing on the base closest to my house (it's a 5 min drive) with rides and food and such, and they open it to everyone. I've been told that there are as many brits as americans, which just seems wierd, but they'll take any excuse to drink that they can.
Speaking of drinking, I haven't tried any of the local brews yet, but I plan to. They have all sorts of ciders and ales, and we've been warned that they are much more potent than american brews. We're heading to a town about 45 min from here tomorrow afternoon (to a curtain store, I'm really tired of the cardboard, and there isn't any where closer to buy decent curtains) and I'm going to stop in the big Tesco (aka super walmart) to grab a few things. I may pick up some cider as well.

We did finally get some fish and chips. There is a place 5 doors down from the house, and I heard it was the best around, so we walked down last weekend. I have nothing to compare it to (Long John Silvers doesn't count) but it was really good. We got a piece of cod (the size of my arm) and some scallops (Aiden loves shrimp, fried scallops was the closest they had) and the largest order of chips (more like potato wedges than fries) that I'd ever seen. We ate all the fish quick, but we couldn't have finished the chips if we ate them for days. Aiden loved all of it, and ate more than I did. They also have fried chicken, burgers, and an assortment of british food, like steak and ale pie. I had the pie at the pub we went to on our new-comers tour, and it isn't bad either. I'm sure we'll be walking down to try something new this weekend, with unpacking and the heat, I haven't had much motivation to cook.