Shortly after I wrote my last column, a fellow resident of Wales pointed out to me that my geography was all wrong. In that column I claimed that Cardiff is in the southwestern end of Wales. It is, in fact, at the southeastern side of Wales.

This country does that to me -- it confuses me. The other day, my wife and I found ourselves having a five-minute discussion on which way is north. Note that I use the word "discussion;" it was not an argument. In order for it to be an argument, one of us would have had to been relatively sure of our position.

Instead, we sat there -- admiring the sunset -- trying to nail down a basic sense of direction.

Everything seems slightly off in Britain. The maps are not to a familiar scale, roads turn in unexpected directions -- even the sky seems to be in a different place.

No, really. The sky here appears closer. When I tell people this, they think I am crazy, but my wife agrees with me. It hangs above you like a massive roof in a covered sports stadium, as if it were not really the sky at all.

Much of this place feels unreal to me. I keep expecting to wake up and find that I am, in fact, in a vacation village in Northern Wisconsin. I don't know why I would think that, but it makes as much sense as anything else.

I think the feeling of pseudo-reality comes in part from constantly hearing the British accent. I didn't grow up hearing this accent spoken in Texas, obviously. I heard it generally in films and TV shows. As a result, somewhere deep within my brain, I have a set of images or stereotypes that I associate with the accent. It's not so much an actual way of speaking as it is a way to communicate certain things about a fictional character.

Imagine a pirate with a Chicago sound, or Harry Potter as some kid with Tennessee drawl -- it just wouldn't work. The accent helps to create a character.

People here aren't acting, though. They aren't affecting their speech. They're just being themselves -- this is the way they talk. But that deep-rooted part of my brain has trouble accepting this and leaves me with the sensation that I am in a place that's not 100 percent real.

It's not just speech. Even the foodstuffs seem made up. The flavors of chips ("crisps" as they call them) appear to have been thought up by someone whose taste buds were destroyed in a freak industrial accident.

Flavored chips aren't all that odd -- we have any number of varieties available in the U.S. And while there are a few wayward flavors in the U.S., such as lime, we've got nothing on the culinary freak show taking place over here.

These are some actual flavors of chips: pickled onion, yeast extract and prawn cocktail. But the topper has got to be roast ox.

What's that? You don't believe me? Here's a picture of the bag. My wife and I actually tried these, but having never before had actual roast ox, I can't say how close they are to the real thing. If these chips are anything to go by, roast ox tastes a lot like that pair of cowboy boots you haven't worn in 10 years but don't have the heart to throw away.

I will give the British some credit, though. Although their roads tend to look like one of those "Family Circus" cartoons that traces Billy's steps through the day, the public transportation here tends to go where people actually want to go. By comparison, the light rail in San Diego doesn't go to the airport; the light rail in Minneapolis goes to the airport, but not the train station; the METRA trains in Chicago don't connect with the El.

While a number of foods here leave me wistfully humming the "Star Spangled Banner," there are some things that I can't believe Americans didn't think of first. They have butter-flavored ice cream here. It's ice cream that tastes like butter! How in the world has the U.S. survived as a nation for 230 years without butter-flavored ice cream?

I enjoy this feeling of surreality. But I am hoping, just for the sake of mental stability, that all of this will start to feel a little more familiar soon. Or, that I'll wake up in the dairy state -- whichever comes first.