My first day in England was eye-opening. I had been told to dress comfortably for international travel, and so I had worn my standard Texas errand-running uniform— denim shorts and a t-shirt. It was great for the flight, but when I arrived in Manchester the following morning, David, who picked me up at the airport, looked at me and laughed.

“You’ll probably want to dig your coat out of your suitcase before we go outside,” he said.

I squinted at him and tried to assess if he was joking or not. Surely he didn’t really mean I needed to wear a coat. It’s frickin March, for god’s sake! On what planet would one even need to think about a coat in March? I mean, we’re almost in summer, what the hell?

I decided he was trying to trick me with this coat nonsense, which was just as well because I didn’t actually have a coat. There was probably a light jacket packed in with my cargo stuff, but that was on a pallet somewhere waiting to board a freight plane in San Antonio. In my suitcases I had only packed all the obvious stuff one would need in March: shorts, t-shirts, flip-flops, bikinis. It was, after all, nearly spring break, and since I was told we lived near the coast I figured the beaches would be packed within another week or two. Obviously I didn’t have a job, so I was planning on spending my days relaxing and enjoying the rest of spring. Hence the wardrobe choices.

David begged me, “please, let me buy you a coat in the airport.” I laughed at how far he was taking the prank. No one buys clothes at airport prices. Then he offered me his coat, and that’s when I noticed all the other people carrying coats. In March.

I started to wonder how many people were in on the joke.

Then we stepped outside the airport and a blast of wind and freezing rain shrapnel pelted me in the legs and sent my hair flying 90 degrees out to the side.

David told me to go back inside, and he went and got the car.

During the drive to Blackpool I gazed in utter amazement at the weather. David half-joked that I was probably wanting to go back to Texas. What he didn’t know is that all my life, I had pretty much been confined indoors in front of the air-conditioner from April until October, because I have never been able to handle heat. It makes me crazy to the point where I want to take hostages. I’m not a fan of direct sunlight, it hurts my eyes, and I sweat so easily that even mildly warm days reduce me to a stinky, soaked-through, dripping mess. I hate summer, have always hated it, and I had no idea that there were places outside Antarctica where one could find cool weather in the summer.

So England was heaven.

Then I saw a field with little white dots scattered across it. It was hard to see what they were through the rain-spattered car window. I wondered, but I didn’t think too much about it. Then a mile or so up the road I saw another field of white dots. What the hell could that be? I rolled down my window a tiny bit to peek out.

Teeny tiny eensy weensy baby sheepies.

I squealed. I’d never seen any sheep at all before in real life, much less bebeh ones. To this day, that is my fondest memory of “how stuff is in England.” In March the landscape just erupts in tiny sheepies, everywhere. Everywhere, all over the whole damned island. It’s the cutest thing you’ve ever seen in your life.

Later I learned a very sobering lesson about not approaching the baby sheepies for cuddles, but I’ll save it for another time.

And that was my first couple of hours as an American living a non-American life.