Although it's still 'English' over here, it's more than a bit different from the American version of English, in fact I would go so far as to say there is a *language barrier.* Here's a few terms that I've picked up/had to decipher so far:
- On a menu, the item "jacket" is not referring to something to put on your body in cold weather. British meaning: Baked Potato. They also enjoy putting such things as prawns (never referred to as shrimp) and tuna and things on them. I like mine with cheese and bacon.
- When telling a Brit that you are attending 'school' here, do not be confused if they seem perplexed. To Brits, 'school' is equivalent to primary/secondary (elementary/middle) school.. Not college. Which is another word that isn't understood sometimes - it's best to refer to it as 'university' (or 'uni' if you're feeling daring.)
- What is this "8 o'clock" you speak of? Here, everything is referred to in military time, which is probably much easier to adapt to had I been in the military at any point in my life prior to this. But, alas, I was not, so military time gets a little difficult because I have to use my brain. For MATH. The horror! (Seriously.. I suck at math [referred to here as 'maths'] in my head.) I haven't been so bold as to refer to times as 17:00 or 22:00 out loud, but I'm slowly getting used to the system.
- Cheers! = Thanks! It's hard to get used to. I feel like I'm at a wedding or celebration or something all the time.
- Crisps = Chips, Chips = Fries, but sometimes Fries = Fries and Chips = Chips. It gets a bit confusing..
- This one was told to me by the woman who is my internship coordinator; do not refer to pants as pants.. they are trousers. I sincerely hope I won't ever have to talk about what I wear on my bottom half, because I know for a fact that I won't ever remember to say trousers. When I think trousers, I think grandpa-pants. ..I don't know why. I just do. People wear pants, and grandpas wear trousers. It's just the way it is. Nothing against grandpas...
- The next one isn't actually that difficult, probably from my years of mastering what is known as "Rollercoaster Tycoon." Lines, lining up, get in line - these words/phrases mean nothing. You "queue up," etc.
- It took me a while to realize (spelled realise here..) that 'estate agents' are in fact what is known in the States as 'realtors.' We went through one to find our flat (..aka apartment), and it didn't really dawn on me until I saw that the word 'realtor' was nowhere to be found. Everyone is an 'estate agent,' which sounds more like somebody who writes wills and distributes dead people's property if you ask me..
- The last word, but certainly not the last word that is different.. by any means, comes to you from a host who seated us at a restaurant here (Navajo Joe's in Covent Garden.. fabulous food! Highly reccommend it.) Anyways, the word 'vacation' is nonexistent here. Instead, vacation = holiday. Used in a sentence: I am trying to plan a holiday in Italy in October.
And there you have it! Hopefully after reading this, you've felt culture shock. But most likely you probably haven't, but you have been saying all the British forms of words in a British accent in your heard, haven't you? Hehehe. But it's late, I'm clearly delirious (and hungry :'( ) but hopefully you've enjoyed all this reading and no photos. It's almost a chapter of a book! ...Okay. No it's not. I'm going to get some rest, so until the next time I post..
xx
(PS: One term I still haven't figured out is "tikka chicken" ..!? What is 'tikka'? I do not comprehend?
I promised to post photos of my new flat, so.. I'm posting some photos of my new flat! It's nice and I like it a lot, although it's a bit dusty and dirty and I keep finding foreign [literally] hairs, so that a little disconcerting. Other than that, everything seems to be in working order so far, other than the fridge which we did a little defrosting of. We bought new bedding, towels, etc. at Primark, store of the low-priced Gods and the hot foreign cousin of Wal-mart. It's nice to have a place of my own, although my bed is in the living room/dining room so I feel like I'm living in a studio apartment of sorts. Alright, enough of my typing; here are the photos!
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| Here is my street.. so cute. :) |
I'll post these as if you were taking a cute little walk down the street and into my apartment. Though, I don't want to post my street/address just in case there are any creepers that may stumble upon this blog and wish to murder me or something terrifying like that.. Safety first!
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| Here it is! Casa de Sara, Maddi, Abby & Melissa |
Now picture pushing open a rather heavy front door, walking up a few flights of narrow stairs with one weird sharp turn and you push open the door...
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| THE FRONT DOOR!!! And the less exciting entry hallway. |
After passing scary Ballerina Barbie, on the way to the living room, you pass the lavender bathroom
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| Clearly someone hadn't discovered the joys of using tape while painting.. |
And now you're here.. the living room/my bedroom! HOO-RAH.
*EDIT: I'd like to mention that I wish that white chair was able to fit through the door, so that it could disappear forever. It looks so deceptively white in this picture, but in reality it's stained beyond recognition. Both the white slipcover and the white chair under the slipcover have so many stains on them, it's terrifying. Currently we're in search of a new slipcover or sheet to put over it so that we might use it. Even though our placement of the chairs isn't very HGTV, it's the only way everything would fit, and it's not that bad in person. Okay.. moving on..
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| Check out my decorating skills.. definitely HGTV worthy, I think. |
There's also a dining room in there too, as well as a great collection of VHS tapes, of which I will start my bi-weekly series of: Outdated VHS Movie of the Bi-Week. Be on the lookout for the first installment.. it won't disappoint. Moving on, here's a peek into the kitchen, which is still in the process of being cleaned/disinfected..
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| Note the scary bin of scary cleaning supplies.. |
There's also two rooms, one down some stairs [Maddi's room] and one off the entry hallway [Abby & Melissa's]. Overall, it's been good, but I haven't technically spent a night in it yet, so I'll let you know in a few weeks how that is.. Anyways, I'll leave you with a picture of the view of the street from one of the windows in the living room. Until then,
xx
xx
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So, I've finally had some free time and a working wi-fi connection, so I figured I'd make a big, long post of what you're REALLY here for.. my pictures. All of these are from my trip to Edinburgh, Scotland during the Fringe Festival for four days.
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| Photos from the train ride up. Cliffs, where puffins may or may not live. |
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| A lighthouse! So cute. |
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| Scottish countryside :) |
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| Downtown Edinburgh. The Scot Monument [aka the Gothic Rocket] in the foreground and Jenner's department store [the oldest department store in the UK] in the back. |
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| DELICIOUS [and much needed] first meal; a cream cheese & ham croissant, mixed 'leaves' and crisps. |
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| Grassmarket, a cute market and restaurant area situated in the shadow of the castle. |
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| Cutest carved owl ever.. A bold, but true, statement. [Note the equally cute pig on the right.] |
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| The completely vibrant (to put it nicely ;) crowd of people packed into the Fringe Fest area. The columns were completely plastered with posters for shows, which would be covered in completely different posters every 12 hours or so. |
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| Me standing on an overlook of part of the city and Arthur's Seat and the craggs in the background. |
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| View of Arthur's Seat from Regent's Park. There were also three huge stone monuments on this hill that tower over the city. |
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| Another view of Edinburgh and the sea from the top of Regent's Park. |
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| The entrance to the castle. There's stadium seating in the corner [the bright blue bit] because the Scottish Tattoo does bagpipe concerts there nightly. |
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| Entrance to the Edinburgh Castle. |
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| View of downtown from the top of the castle. You can see Prince's Park, the Art Gallery -- it has four Monet's, two da Vinci's, a Botticelli, a Titian and more! -- and the Gothic Rocket in order from left to right. |
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| Looking down on the [mostly Asian] crowd at the castle. :) |
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| Climbing up Arthur's Seat. This was after we had walked a slow, steady incline to the main path up the mountain [pictured here]. The path up consists of a narrow, winding path of stone "steps," which are actually semi-flat stones arranged loosely in the form of what many people would consider "stairs." We climbed to the top of the tallest bit of the peak in the top left corner. |
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| Taking a break to breathe/pose for cheesy pictures. |
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| Looking down on the way up the mountain. |
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| At the top! Very windy and kind of chilly, but the sun was out off and on and after sweating my bottle of water out my lower back, the wind was actually much appreciated. |
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| Yellow flowers that I was quite fond of, with the valley on top of Arthur's Seat that we had lunch on. |
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| Holyrood Palace, the Queen's official residence in Scotland. Home to the most infamous Queen as well, Mary Queen of Scots. Her original bed and chamber is all still there, as well as a plaque to mark the spot where her supposed lover was killed by her husband. |
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| Posing stupidly with the little handset tour they give you, which was actually quite concise and informative. Unfortunately, photos weren't allowed inside the palace, so I just have pictures from the outside. |
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| Gorgeous flowers in the garden at Holyrood Palace. They had hot pink and white flowers like this all over downtown Edinburgh as well. |
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| More from the palace garden. |
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| The gorgeous ruins of an abbey which are connected to the palace. It was destroyed during Henry VIII's reign. I took a lot of pictures in it, but I didn't want to bore you with all of them on here. You can see more in my Edinburgh album on Facebook. ;) |
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| Inside the National Museum of Scotland. It was a really cool museum, the animal exhibit [pictured here] was especially awesome! And kind of creepy. |
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| The best street performer. He was very witty and was an above average juggler and unicyclist. Definitely the best show we saw at the Fringe! ;) |
Overall, the weather was fabulous and summery; not to mention very uncharacteristic of Edinburgh, haha. :) I'd definitely recommend climbing Arthur's Seat to everyone, even though it's essentially hell on the way up, the end result is so so worth it. If you scrolled through all the pictures, stopping at a choice few to look at more in depth: C. If you scrolled through the photos, looked at maybe the first 10 and read the captions, plus read the intro and outro: B+. If you read the intro, outro, all the captions and checked out each photo: A!!
I'll be posting in a few days with some photos of my new flat [ !!!!! ], my roommates and the London Center.
Until then,
xx
My first official post from abroad! I've been here for about a week and a half thus far, and it's been a mix of the amazing (ie; climbing Arthur's Seat) and the stressful (ie; finding a flat in Central London.) I haven't had much time to be on the internet and blog, but I had a bit of spare time so I figured I'd just do a quick update.
1. Spending 4 hours on the Tarmac waiting for a thunderstorm to end is not the ideal situation to be in after sitting on a concrete bench in JFK for 7 hours previous...
2. 5 hour train ride to Edinburgh: so worth it for the beautiful countryside & seaside scenery! (And the sleeping pill effect it seems to have..)
3. Discovered that gatherings of thousands of theater enthusiasts/Fringe Festivals are not my thing...
4. Discovered that I sleep exponentially well on trains.
5. Never agree to find your own flat in London, especially if you're trying to stick to a budget, share with three other people and find one that lets you only rent for 4 months!! Or buy a stress ball to use during your search (which will undoubtably consist of 4 hours in front of a computer screen with your ear glued to a phone.) Also, beware of carpal tunnel from crossing out every address you write down.
Don't be fooled by my whining though; I've been having a great time so far! It's only rained heavily once so far (..gasp!) and the weather, especially in Edinburgh, has been pretty nice albeit chilly. All in all, I think the semester is going to be great, we did find a flat on day two (Thursday) and I'll be sure to post pictures of it in the future. Stay tuned for an XXL post with all my Edinburgh photos and witty captions..
Until then;
xx