You need to take it in stride.

We woke up to no power this morning.

The fireplace wouldn't work. Heavy clothes, sun beaming in the front window.

Harvard and Cornell are always really fast crews.

Americans generally associate boats with leisure. Vastly less prosperous, Egyptians associate them with nothing but labour. Rowing a boat is something a fisherman is forced to do to make a living; how could such an activity bring me - a woman no less - pleasure?

I was going to be living there and I didn't want to sound like a foreigner all my life.