Time flies!

I have now lived in England for a month. Let me begin by saying that I absolutely love it here.  I may never come home.  Here are some of my observations so far. 

1: England is cold.  I had heard this, but didn’t really understand it until I got here.  I wear a blanket wrapped around me pretty much all the time at home, and it’s only October.  

2: English food isn’t half bad.  They have some really delicious stuff here.  For example: pickle, a delicious spread eaten with bread and cheese and made of I don’t know what; HP sauce, to be eaten with anything traditionally part of English breakfast, but also good on almost everything I’ve tried it on; every kind of yogurt I’ve tried; and squash, which is actually drink mix, not a vegetable. 

3: English teeth aren’t that bad either.  They’re not perfect, but they’re also not as wonky as we think they are in America.

4: English accents really are fun to listen to, especially when they’re kids.  Sometimes I find myself not listening to what’s being said because I just like the sound of what they’re saying.  And, there are so many different kinds of accents.  It’s great. 

            5: English drivers are insane.  I have feared for my life on multiple occasions.  The streets are very narrow and the drivers have to swerve around parked cars and cars that are coming towards them.  It also doesn’t help that it feels like we’re turning into oncoming traffic all the time.  

Introducing...

I realized I have not yet introduced my other roommate.  So without further ado, I give you, Nicole.  She’s brilliant.  She’s of Jamaican descent, so now I have a black friend.  Yahoo!  (I know what you’re all thinking and no, none of her relatives work on any cruise ships.  And her brothers are too young.)  Anyway, she’s from the east, actually very near Kim.  We sat on her bed and talked for a couple of hours the first night we met.  It was great.  She’s full of energy and loves to shop.  I think we’ll have a great time together.  Being around her makes me feel like I’m young again, which is great.  We laugh all the time when we're together and have had many extremely important discussions on such topics as chips and hair.  When we first met, she wasted no time in getting to the heart of the matter and asked if there were any guys I thought were cute and about my love history.  She has promised to help me find some worthy snogs.  She also agrees that our house is freezing and has agreed to take my side on the heating issue.  

Lost in Translation

Here’s a sampling of how many of my conversations with my roommates go:

Me: “Do we have any dish soap?”

Them: “What’s dish soap?”

Me: “Umm, soap you wash dishes with.  Don’t you call it that?”

Them: “No. It’s called washing up liquid.”

Me: “Washing up liquid? That takes so long to say, though.”

 

Or

 

Me: “Is it okay for me to say _______.”

Them: “No. That’s a swear word here.”

Me: “Good to know.”

 

Or

 

Me: “I hate it when it rains. It gets my pants wet.”

Them: “How does it get your pants wet?  Are you sticking your bum out?”

Me: with a confused look. “No. (Then remembering that ‘pants’ are underwear) I mean. I hate it when it rains because it gets my trousers wet.”

Them: “Right.  That makes more sense.”

 

Or

 

Them: “We need to (some idiomatic phrase).”

Me: blank stare

Them: “Don’t you say that in America?”

Me: “Nope.”

 

Or

 

Me: “Should I be offended by ______.”

Them: “Yes.”

Me: “Okay.”

 

Or

 

Them: “It’s just the other side of the zebra crossing.”

Me: “The what?”

Them: “Zebra crossing.  Where you cross the street.”

Me: “Ahh. The crosswalk.  Gotcha.”

 

Or

 

Me: “I also bought English muffins.  Wait. You guys probably just call them muffins, huh?”

Them: “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

Week one in review

I have now completed my first week of graduate school.  Here’s how it went.  (You’ll notice that there’s not a lot of class work being done.  This may or may not change in the future. I kind of hope it doesn’t, but realize it should.)

Monday: Woke up around 10.  Had breakfast.  Lounged around.  Read scriptures.  Eventually got dressed.  Did some laundry.  Watched most of Return of the King.  Went to FHE.

Tuesday:  Got up around 11.  Got ready.  Did more laundry.  Went to campus to open a bank account.  It took over an hour.  Should have gone to the library afterward, but didn’t want to.  Went to ASDA (English Wal-Mart) and spent $200 on food and stuff that I already own in the States but couldn’t bring with me.  Lame.

Wednesday:  Got up around 10:30 after staying up late to watch the end of Return of the King that I hadn’t finished on Monday.  Went shopping in the afternoon instead of going to the library.  Bought some new long-sleeved tops since it’s cold here.  Attended Institute and scoped out the guys. 

Thursday: Got up late again.  Puttered around the house doing nothing very important.  Intended to go to the library before class but didn’t.  Went to class from 4-6.  Talked to Nicole about guys.

Friday: Went to the library for an hour and a half.  Checked out 5 books.  Finally something productive is being done.  Ate lunch.  Chatted with my roommate.  Read one chapter of said books.

Saturday:  Got up at 11:30.  Played around on the internet.  Read my scriptures.  Didn’t read anything for my classes.  Ate a kebab for dinner.  Watched a movie.

The Wonderful World of Academia

I had my first class yesterday and it was great.  While I was relieved to discover that I am not the oldest person in our program, or the only one with a grating American accent, I was less happy to discover that we have an interrupter in our class.  For those of you who are not part of the discipline of history, I’ll explain a bit about the annoyingness of some historians.  (Now I don’t mean to say that this can’t happen in other disciplines, but I think historians are the biggest offenders.)  We have a tendency to think we’re smarter than most other people and that, as a result, we are duty-bound to share our knowledge and thus make the world a better place.  That’s all fine and dandy when you’re the only historian around, but when you get a room full of us, it’s just out of control.  Everyone has to try to prove how much more they know than everyone else by interrupting the presenter with snarky history comments.  It’s annoying and I never do it, unless it’s absolutely necessary.  Hopefully, “the interrupter” will be held at bay in future discussions.  Nevertheless, I am enjoying being a part of academia once again.  Even our discussion yesterday about how and what to research for our theses blew any discussion I had with my students out of the water.  It makes me feel kind of cool to be walking around campus in England as a Master’s student.  I’m considering wearing a tweed blazer and smoking a pipe in an effort to complete the transformation from American teacher to British student.  

September 16, 2009

Today was a fantastic day, partly because I got to sleep.  I finally figured I should make an appearance by about 1:00.  I showered in what may prove to be the one downfall of my stay here, other than the lack of a dishwasher.  It was alternately freezing and scalding.  I guess I don’t yet know how these English showers work.  It may help me to shower quickly, though, so maybe it’s not a bad thing.  After a quick lunch of a ham sandwich with the Queen’s mustard, which is delicious and very pungent, Kim and I headed into town to get my house key and do some exploring.  As we walked down the street, we discovered two charity shops.  I was beyond excited to have my first charity shop experience.  I was not disappointed since I found something special that a member of my family might just get for the Christmas white elephant gift exchange…if they’re lucky.  We then wandered onto campus and ended up gathering horse chestnuts for a game called konkers which all the English kids apparently play.  You drill a hole through the nut and put a string through it then alternately try to hit the other person’s konker until one breaks off the string.   Harry and Kim were kind enough to demonstrate for me later that evening.  When we got home, I finished unpacking and getting arranged.  Then I decided to have a quintessential English dinner, a kebab.  There’s a kebab shop just down the street from us so I walked down there all by myself and got a chicken tikka kebab.  It was DELICIOUS!  I think I’m already addicted.  Just writing about it is making my mouth water.  I predict that soon the people there will not even have to ask what I’ll have. Whether that’s good news or bad, I’ll leave up to you to decide.  Overall, I’m feeling very confident that I will love my life here, if I don’t freeze to death.  I have a bad feeling about the state of my internal temperature, which suffers greatly throughout the Utah winter and is already suffering here.  I’ve only been warm for a few hours total since I got here and most of them were while I was in my bed.  Unfortunately I can’t spend all of my time there.  Something drastic may have to be done.  Stay tuned for further developments in Andrea’s Quest for Warmth.  

And so it begins

September 15, 2009 (I haven't had internet until now, so I wrote several of these entries and just saved them until I could post.  That's why the date is different.)

Well, I’m here.  And I love it!  It took me forever to finally arrive, but once I did, I knew I had made the right choice.  I even liked the bus ride from the airport.  The town of Reading is lovely.  Reading is a real city, in that there are not a lot of touristy things to do, but it’s also pretty.  There’s a park in the middle of the city; the Thames River that runs through town; and charming, old, red brick buildings everywhere.  I think it will be the perfect place to have a truly British experience.  Now I just need to wander around and get my bearings.  When I arrived at my house and met my roommate, I felt so relieved.  Her name is Kim and she is fabulous.  Her accent is classy and so is her carriage.  She is from Suffolk, in the East, and is studying philosophy.  Right away she made me feel welcome and comfortable.  I think we’ll be good friends.  I also think she’s as relieved as I am about our future together under the same roof.  Once the introductions were completed, I proceeded to unpack and had a moment’s-worth of pause as it set in that I was, in fact, living in England.  It passed quickly, though, so I feel hopeful that I won’t be too homesick.  I did find a letter from my dad nestled in my luggage that was very sweet and managed to make me cry just a bit.  Oh yeah, one thing I have to mention is that I have a wardrobe; an honest to goodness wardrobe.  It even has an old-fashioned key to lock it.  I believe there is a passage to another world in the back, but I haven’t had time to check that out completely.  After I got everything sorted (which I have concluded means taken care of) Kim and Harry (her boyfriend,) and I went to the Tesco and I bought some cheese and onion flavored crisps (chips,) a huge loaf of fresh bread, some English mustard (which is certified by the Queen no less,) and some yogurt with mix-ins that I’m told is quite delicious.  So I’m set.  Later that night after dinner at Harry’s family’s house, I fell blissfully to sleep, thinking, “I successfully completed my first day in England. I totally got this.”