The other half of the Worcester post office: eggs. Not in a refrigerator, not even in a carton. Just shelves of warm, loose, brown eggs. Some so fresh as to be laced with feathers.

The Brits are not known for creating the most mouth-watering meals, so my taste buds were prepared for some bland, spiceless, less than appetizing cuisine prior to flying over the Atlantic. But, never did I predict meal deals of eggs and stamps, pretzels to be a rare delicacy or French fries to be served with everything from lasagna to Chinese food.

English food proved to be different than every other mouthful I had ever chewed in my previous passport-less life. Malt vinegar and curry sauce are as much staples in the British Isles as salt and pepper are to us yanks. Brits are big fans of “brown sauce,” a condiment that just by the ring of its name did not appeal to me, and are stingy on what they refer to as “tomato ketchup,” expecting one packet to last through a plate of “chips” and a burger. Abroad, I learned exactly what a prawn is, that omelets can be accompanied on the same dish as salads, that when you ask for grilled cheese in a British restaurant, you must specify “grilled cheese on toast” or you are brought a slice of melted cheddar. And on the occasion that a restaurant runs out of tortilla chips, the chef just might resort to a bed of cool ranch Doritos for an appetizer of nachos.

It took mere weeks into our semester in England for my American friends and I to long for an American meal. “A big pretzel from a New York City street corner, a cookie dough blizzard, Easy Mac, Dunkin Donuts French vanilla iced coffee, Grandma’s mashed potatoes.…” We made a game of it, sitting around the table, brainstorming lists of the food we planned to sink our teeth into in three months. “Honey mustard, milk duds, popcorn shrimp, Olive Garden’s never ending salad and breadsticks….”

Our European flat mates could always tell when an American received a package from home. Opening a box postmarked from the United States was like Christmas, giggles and screams of “Oh My God, Tootsie Rolls,” or “Oh My God, Pop-Tarts,” filtered through the building, summoning American students in search of a taste of familiarity and playing on the curious taste buds of foreigners.

One girl received $200 worth of Oreo cookies, Ramen noodles and Twizzlers. The parcel that yielded the loudest of my screams contained a bag of Mike and Ikes, Jelly Belly jelly beans, trail mix, and of course, pretzels. We all tried to ration our stock, but the goodies did not fair long in the pantry.

The desire for a true United States fork-fill hit hardest on the holiday American stomachs relish in most, Thanksgiving. It proved most difficult to create a traditional holiday dinner from grocery stores that only sell peas that are minty like toothpaste, and whose shelves had never been stocked with canned pumpkin or chocolate chips and only had turkeys available two weeks prior to Christmas.

We chopped up Cadbury chocolate bars for the chocolate chip cookies, our pumpkin pie turned into a black current cheese cake, and once we finally found a turkey, we had no idea what to do with it, our parents had always taken care of the bird. But with the assistance of holiday visitors from home, hording boxes of Stove Top and cans of cranberry sauce, we managed to create a tasty Thanksgiving meal, even if it was not as traditional as was planned.

Despite the differences, I became more accustomed to British cuisine than I had imagined. I became an addict of crumpets and tea biscuits, an avid eater of Cadbury’s chocolate and had to have at least one meal a day that consisted of a pasty or jacket potato. The little pre-packaged sandwiches, stuffed with odd combinations of food, like cucumbers, onions and cheese, were not so revolting either.