Big Things

En route to a field trip at the traffic control 'centre' in Southampton today I saw the Legend of the Seas, the uber-giant-biggest-in-the-world cruise ship that's in port that has warranted two consectutive nights of fireworks. The ship was impressively large and was considerably larger than both the nearby leisure world and Holiday Inn. There are also 3 other ships in port right now. This apparently is enough to warrant the hanging of signs down by the ports saying 'Southampton - The Eventful City', which, I'm sorry, is a bit ridiculous. Although there was that Titanic exhibition and that fun fair a couple weeks ago...

Speaking of big, Chris was nice enough to let me tag along and gawk/buy food on a trip to big Sainsburys up in Eastleigh after the field trip. Sainsburys is really ideal because it is large and reasonably priced yet free of the stigma surrounding Asda (because it is wal-mart and evil) and Tesco (which is the English equivalent of wal-mart and is taking over but I don't really have anything against it myself). But Sainsburys has orange plastic bags, which makes it exciting in its own right. Anyways, it was very exciting to go to a grocery store in a car because that meant I could buy more than I could easily carry back on the bus. They also had black bean salsa, a flavor of Muller rice I haven't tried yet (blackcurrant), clothing and electronics sections, and I even got a six-pack of Diet Coke (they're heavy so I don't normally buy). I was also able to bring either amusement/shocking disappointment to at least two other people while there. The first was a patron in the paper towel aisle who was amused when I didn't know what 'bog roll' was and had to ask for it to be repeated three times before the fact that I was American needed to be mentioned. The second was the check-out stand guy who must have been in awe of A) my inability to open the plastic bags and B) my inability to put items in them in an orderly manner. Luckily I don't mind looking a bit silly from time to time.

Tomorrow is my field trip to Croydon to look at light rail. I bought some road trip food to share with the others to make up for the stuff I ruined before the last field trip.