By the end of the last post, I had an apartment, a Social Security number, a bank account, the beginnings of US credit and the foundations of an American life.
What I did not have (and still don’t) was a car.
In Connecticut, that matters rather more than I had appreciated before moving here. You can technically exist without one, but the entire landscape seems to assume that at some point you will give in and buy four wheels. Shops are spread across plazas, errands are measured in driving time rather than walking distance, and even places that look close on a map can be awkward to reach on foot.
So, having finally obtained my Adult Learner’s Permit, the next stage was to work out how to turn that little piece of plastic into actual independence.
Eight Hours of Being Told Not to Crash
The first requirement was an eight-hour safe-driving course.
I had originally hoped to tie this into whichever driving school would eventually take me on for lessons, but availability was limited and the price varied wildly. In the end, I gave up trying to coordinate everything perfectly and booked one of the cheapest courses I could find, around $140 and, crucially had space available.
The course can be taken in evenings, over two four-hour sessions or in one enormous eight-hour block… Naturally I chose the latter.
At 8am on Saturday morning, I logged onto Zoom and proceeded to spend most of the day being taught how now to kill myself or anyone else with a car.
Some of it was genuinely useful; we covered things like driving on ice, and what to do if the car begins to skid and how to react in poor weather, all of which probably has rather more relevance in CT than it did where I learnt to drive.
Most of it can be summarised as:
Do not drink and drive. Do not take drugs and drive. Please never do either of those things. Like ever.
The information would be explained once, then explained again in a slightly different way, followed by a video of someone crashing a car and another explanation of why crashing cars is generally considered undesirable!
I completely understand the importance of road safety… but 8 hours of it?!
The sequence also seems backwards, I had written the knowledge test and issued a learner’s permit, only to then spend an entire day learning about the rules and safety.
Still, I had my next certificate. Another box ticked.
Learning to Drive… Again
The next requirement was actual time behind the wheel with an instructor, which has been unexpectedly difficult to organise. It is summer, so every teenager in CT seems to have the same idea so driving schools are booked out.
I finally have a two-hour mandatory lesson tomorrow. There is something faintly ridiculous about being an experienced driver who has driven across Britain, Europe and the US, but now needs someone to sit beside me and decide whether I understand how the roads work BEFORE I even take the driving test.
The hope is that once the instructor is satisfied I am not a complete liability, I can finally move towards booking the road test.
Everything just seems to take slightly longer than expected.
The Car That Doesn’t Exist
While waiting, I have also been looking at cars. I had assumed somewhere around a $10k mark would be a perfectly respectable used car: nothing glamorous, just reliable enough for work, shopping and weekends away.
This middle ground seems surprisingly difficult to find.
Cars around that price exist, but are often much older, have significantly higher mileage or come with uncertainty that I am reluctant to agree to that large amount of money and hope for the best. It feels like I either need to buy something genuinely cheap and accept the gamble, or stretch the budget.
For now Uber and Lyft have actually worked out at roughly what I had budgeted for owning a car each month. The bigger problem is independence. Every journey has to be planned… and justified… rather than simply hopping in and going.
I hired one again for several days recently just to catch up on errands, meetings and a few social events. It was surprisingly liberating however fleeting.
My other solution is walking, although I may have taken that slightly too far when I decided to walk six miles to the next town and six miles back in around 30°C. Twenty-three thousand steps later, I was reminded why Americans drive everywhere.
Starting to Feel Normal
Despite the continuing transport saga, life is beginning to settle.
Work now feels much more routine, my second paycheck has arrived and the apartment increasingly feels like home rather than somewhere I’ve landed. It still needs artwork and a few finishing touches, although after the amount spent furnishing it, blank walls seem perfectly acceptable.
Socially, things are starting to develop too. We had a happy hour after work, I restarted the office board-game night and I have continued attending a local gaming group. Being in the office physically makes an enormous difference compared with consulting remotely; there are spontaneous conversations, ideas bounced around and all of the little interactions that never happen over Teams.
I am also gradually discovering my local area. One walk I heard someone shouting, thought nothing of it, then received a text from my landlady explaining it was her!
She happened to be renovating another house down the street and spotted me walking past. Inviting me in, it was a rather smarter place than mine but I came away unexpectedly pleased with the little apartment I’ve ended up with.
Same Language, Different Language
The longer I am here, the more I realise that America feels familiar without actually being familiar.
Shopping alone seems to require an entire strategy. Going from store to store often requires an evening planning and searching a route, via food and refreshments en-route. Also, every supermarket (sorry grocery store) requires another app, barcode or digital coupon.
Then when reaching the checkout feels like a roulette wheel of finding out what you are actually going to pay!
That sums up a lot of my experience so far. I moved from an English-speaking country, yet so many ordinary things operate according to slightly different assumptions.
Price excludes tax. Tipping is everywhere. Except when you don’t have to. Credit works differently (so many rewards!). Cars are essential. Prescription drugs are advertised on TV. Returns are incredibly generous, while everything else seems designed to encourage you to buy something else. Why not top up your Amazon basket for FREE delivery, despite paying monthly for free delivery.
It feels like everything has been translated into a language I technically understand, but not quite correctly.
And four weeks into actually living and working here, that strangeness is beginning to sit alongside something else: homesickness.
The first few weeks were too busy to notice. There was always another document, appointment or piece of furniture to sort. More recently, my grandma has been unwell and spent some time in hospital, and that has made being thousands of miles away feel considerably more real.
Fortunately, I am heading back to the UK in a couple of weeks for my mum’s birthday, which I am really looking forward to.
At the moment, I seem to be in this slightly liminal stage where America no longer feels like a holiday, but it does not quite feel like normal life either.
It’s somewhere in between.
Still, with each certificate, paycheck, social event, and slightly ridiculous hurdle, it is beginning to feel more like I’m living a life over here.
The Damp Patch 🧱 