Challenges of speaking a different language- English that is...

Brett and I were keen to move to London due to the big city life, close proximity to mainland Europe and most of all... that they speak the same language as us! Or so we thought....

95% of our languages are the same, however there have been a few instances where both parties are waving the white flag of defeat because neither of us can understand each other.

The other day, I tried to ask for salmon on my salad- the waitress and I went back and forth three times before we realized we were having communication problems, at which point I did my best Queen Elizabeth II impersonation, stuck my nose up and prestigiously pronounced "salmon" the way a Brit would.  The link below has both the UK and the US versions of this word. Same thing for tomato and zed (for the letter z). Don't even get me started on the pronunciation for zebra.
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/salmon
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/zebra?q=zebra

Our vowels are harsher than the British, therefore our speech at times can be unrecognizable, especially when speaking to people where English is their second language and they learned British English. Similar to Americans learning Latin American Spanish verse Spanish Spanish.

Growing up in America, I always had these preconceived ideas of what the English were like. Most of these notions came, I'm sure, from Mary Poppins. Before moving over here, I didn't believe the Brits would say things like: "... skip to the loo", "Jolly good", "Top of the morning", "Bloody hell", "Cheerio", ect. ect. ect. Because it was so stereotypical English! But guys, I have heard them all! And every time I hear someone use the term "Blimey!", I get overjoyed thinking that Austin Powers was an accurate reflection of the English.

If you recall, I worked at a butcher shop temporarily before finding my permanent job in the city. And due to the grotesque nature of the business, I was sometimes shocked by what I saw in the butcher shop. Do you know what phrases this well educated and sophisticated American (gag) taught these English blokes? "Oh. My. God" and "Holy crap". It's like when the English first encountered the Native Americans and blessed them with smallpox. To this day, when I walk into the butcher shop, the guys greet me with a cheerful "Oh my God, it's Mary! Holy crap!"

I created a quiz on Sporcle (a quiz and trivia website- or what I like to call, senior year of college) to demonstrate some of the differences I experience between UK English and US English on a daily basis. Have a go at it if you are bored, and let me know how you did! The link is attached below.

Link below:
Can you pick the US equivalent to the UK word? - Sporcle Games & Trivia



Cheers/ Ta- Mary

Bro weekend- St. Paul's

My older brother, Allen, recently visited us in London. He stayed with us in London for 10 days, which fell over two weekends. This way we were able to still spend a lot of time with him on the weekends and during the evenings, however didn't have to take off work!

Friday Night:
On the first Friday he was in town, we headed to a local pub in Clapham for some delicious cask ales and the traditional fish & chips. The local pub we visited was The Sun, in Clapham Old Town.

Saturday:
Apparently our favourite things about London include the food, because on Saturday morning we enjoyed a proper English breakfast while sitting outside in Clapham. The proper English breakfast includes fried eggs, rashers (English bacon), sausage, roasted tomatoes, baked beans and toast. Pretty much a guaranteed hangover cure. Clapham has lots of great breakfast options, however one place that is the best bang for our buck (quid) is Fantasia Cafe in Old Town.

After breakfast we headed to one of the more popular markets, Borough Market to enjoy lots of delicious free samples and a few pints of proper cider. After Borough Market we decided to go to St. Paul's and climb to the 350-some meters to the top of the dome, to the whispering gallery. From Borough market, walk down the South side of the river, which takes you by the William Shakespeare Globe Theater and the Tate Modern Museum. Then cross the pedestrian bridge across the Thames, and St. Paul's will be right there. It is a very lovely walk and one that I recommend our visitors to do.

It costs £16.50 to enter St. Paul's, which included access the whispering gallery, the top of the dome and the crypt. The exterior of the dome allows for a 360 degree view of the city, perfect for a photo opportunity.

The walk to the top is not for the faint of heights, nor is it for clumsy people... Mom- you are not allowed to the top.  Brett is deathly afraid of heights, and even the walk up the metal stairs scared him. . Like for example, when we were in Florence, he didn't make it to the top of the Duomo, he turned around halfway and left me to fend for myself. Therefore, St. Paul's was very reminiscent of our Italy experience.  See below how he is practically reaching for the wall.


Tomorrow I'll post on the Chelsea football game we attended. Sorry for the lack of posts! I'll try to make them shorter and more frequent going forward. Especially with all our travel coming up, it's going to be hard to keep up!

Cheers! Mary

Spring in London

Spring is in full bloom here in London. As I type this blog post, Brett and I are enjoying a crisp refreshing glass of white wine while enjoying the sunshine and fresh air.

Coming from a city where spring is lucky to show up at the first of May, it has been so refreshing to have a winter that ends in February and where the coldest it ever got during the day was 30 degrees. I always wondered if I would miss the snow, but this winter has proved that I don’t actually like snow unless I am on a mountain. My poor friends in Chicago have suffered through a terrible winter and I’m not even sure if a day like London is having right now is in the near future for them. 

As most of you know, just before Christmas I started working at a butcher shop in Clapham. I worked as the delicatessen, making gourmet sandwiches and handling the deli and cheese counters. There wasn’t too much about working in a butcher shop that phased me, for example seeing headless animals or watching one of the guys blow into the esophagus of a rabbit to make the lungs fill up, but I was quite scared of the huge refrigerator that held all the meat. Something about seeing meat hanging from a meat hook reminds me of some horror movie and the thought of being locked in that refrigerator scared me on a daily basis. 

Although the refrigerator was equivalent to the basement furnace in Home Alone, the butcher shop has been such a positive experience for me. It relieved a lot of the stress and pressure I felt around not having a job. We are approaching our six month anniversary of moving to London and I would have to say that trying to find a job has been the hardest part of our move. Having a temporary job really relived a lot of stress and pressure that I felt about sitting at home all day. When you don’t have a job and no children to keep you busy, you definitely build up a lot of guilt regarding not doing anything all day long. Brett would get home from work and say "How was your day? What did you do?", like most loving husbands do. But something about watching 6 hours straight of "Keeping up with the Kardashians" made me feel guilty. I always thought I would be an awesome Housewife, but at the end of the day, I need a lot on my plate to stay productive. So working at the butcher shop for 6 hours a day helped break up my binge TV sessions, and forced me to be productive outside of those hours. 

But after almost six months of unemployment I have finally found a job! And it's a great job and an international company to which I will most likely be able to transfer back to the state with. The picture below is a view from our offices. 

 I started last week, and some of my initial thoughts are 1. That I miss wearing yoga pants to work 2. The Northern line between 8:15-8:45 is pretty similar to the picture below, no one is physically pushing you, but at times I think I could touch the next person with my tongue. You can only let so many trains pass you before you just force yourself on the train. 

That's it for now... We have our second visitor coming this week... my brother is coming to visit for 10 days!! Woot woot!

Cheers, Mary

Life as Cats

 

Monsieur Nick

We moved into our apartment last week and, as one of my friends put it, we are nesting. By that she meant making our flat a home and becoming accustom to our life in London. As I had previously mentioned, our flat came furnished with the large essential items such as a bed, couch, chest of drawers, ect. However there were still a few items that we needed in order to make our apartment more functional. For instance, Brett brought more shoes to London than I did and because of all his shoes, he was very adamant about having a shoe rack. Seriously, a shoe rack was on the same level of priority as a TV and dishes.

Now I'll take a minute here to explain the purpose of the title of this post: Life as Cats.  When we decided to move abroad I was pretty overwhelmed with all the logistics it was going to take to move us from Chicago to Cincinnati (where our items would be stored and where our parents live) and then to London. My married into mother (I refuse to use the word in-law, as it carries a negative connotation and doesn't begin to describe my love for my married in family) rested assured that everything would work out perfectly because we are cats... excuse me? I mean I LOVE cats, but come again? How are we cats? She explained that we always seem to land on our feet and that our move and time in London will all work out because we always land on our feet. And I took that piece of advice to heart. Like when we didn't have a place to live for the month of September, when I lost my debit card and only source of money three days before we left the States, when we couldn't decide on where we wanted to live and the fact that I don't have a job yet.

Cat Instance #1:
But she is right, we are cats and whatever obstacle that comes up in our lives, we somehow manage to land on our feet. We had put an offer in on a place in West Hampstead, but at the end of the day, I didn't feel excited or nervous on whether we were going to get the place. I think it was that I wasn't sold on West Hampstead. I took that as a bad omen and panicked worrying if we would be in the right location. The next day we toured the Clapham area in anticipation of our flat showings scheduled for the following day. Once we stepped out of the Clapham Common stop, we were sold on the area. Which didn't really help my anxiety because then I needed our relator to find us a flat just as nice as the one in West Hampstead! But as cats will have it, we found the perfect flat, in the perfect area and again landed on our feet.

This is the view from our apartment. We can see Big Ben and Westminster!

Most of the items we purchased to finish off our flat were found via Gumtree, which is similar to Craigslist in the States. However not having a car made the search quite interesting. We ended up finding items all within walking distance, and ended up carrying each item back to our apartment. Including a vanity dressing table, a huge mirror and a TV stand. It took us all day to pick up those items because the walk each way would take about 30 minutes and we obviously could only carry one item at a time. Notice in the picture below, the table we carried 1.5 miles as well as the coffee cup that I found on the side of the street in a box labeled "free".

Cat Instance #2:
The biggest cat-like behavior so far was that the guy across the hall from us was moving to Italy the same weekend as we were moving in! He gave us so many items FOR FREE that he couldn't take to Italy with him.

The worst part about moving to a city via plane, instead of vehicle, is that you can't take the small items that you have had forever, like hangers! We ended up spending 30 quid on 50 HANGERS! So when we started seeing him place items in the hall, we scavenged everything. Here is what we got from him: shoe rack, a few baskets, a few pots, a Brita, a bathroom rug, mop bucket, a light comforter, a few trash cans, two bedside table lamps, extension cords, HANGERS, vases, containers, and a chair! Seriously we took everything he was getting rid of, including a juicer which I don't really think I will ever use, nor really know how to use it.

It was to the point that I was checking the hallway every hour to see if more treasures were out there! Eventually he just invited me into his apartment and practically said "take whatever you need". And now that he is gone, the hallway isn't as cheerful anymore, I felt like every time I turned the corner to our apartment, it was like Christmas morning!

I tried to think of something that I could give him to thank him for everything he gave to us, but being that we just move here, all I could offer him was a bowl of chili. Which he respectfully declined.

Cat Instance #3:
As a domestic house cat, I also sleep a lot since I don't particularly have a job. Which leads to my fourth and final cat-like behavior.

Hopeful Cat Instance #4:
So now to wrap up this cat related post, I am hopeful that I will use some of my cat-magic and land myself a purrrrfect job. Wish me luck!!

Do you guys find yourself acting like cats ever?

 

Landed in London

We started down this path to living in London back in March, and it is hard to believe that we actually made it here nearly six months later. We landed in London last Monday with 7 bags and one box to our names. It figures that all three of Brett's checked bags were exactly 50 lbs (the weight limit), and all three of my bags were overweight. When we arrived in London, we had a private car service waiting to pick us up from the airport. He drove us around the city for what seemed like an hour, giving us the tour of London and then finally dropping us off at our temporary housing in the West End, or how I like to describe it- tourist hell! It's very close to Regents square, Buckingham palace and Westminster, which explains the massive amounts of people.

Brett thankfully was given last week off as a transition week, therefore we used this time to really try and get to know our new home. It however did not feel like a vacation, I felt like we were on an African Safari... we were constantly in  search of food and shelter. Food being that we kept accidentally ordering this thing called rillette, which is the preparation of meat similar to pate and served as a spoonful on your plate that looks and smells strikingly like cat food. But for fear of offending the chef, I made sure to eat at least half of that Fancy Feast dinner. After ordering rillettes two times last week, we decided to start googling menu items to be sure of our order.

And shelter being that we were constantly exploring new neighborhoods to determine which area would suit our lifestyle best. We were between West Hampstead and Clapham Common, both zone 2 locations, only about 3-4 miles away from the city center and both only about 30 minutes from work. We ended up choosing a place in Clapham Old Town. We found an apartment complex right in the center of a bunch of restaurants, bars and cute little shops, plus the tube stop and a gigantic park are very close by as well! Our apartment does not have a dishwasher, something I had been preparing for the last few months but does have a "full sized" refrigerator, meaning it is tall and has a separate freezer. Most of the places we were looking at only have those mini refrigerators you take to college.

The most interesting thing about Flat searching in London is that most of the places available for let are furnished, the price is determined per week and it is all negotiable. The place we ended up signing was newly refurbished and the only piece of furniture was a kitchen table. The place was listed for 350 GBP/week and we put an offer in at 340 GBP/ week plus furniture: king size bed (equivalent to a queen in the states), bed side tables, 2 chest of drawers, coffee table, ANNNNDDD I asked them to buy this specific couch frmo IKEA that I am obsessed with, and it seems like they are going to get the one I asked! My friends in Brooklyn own this couch and it is perfect for lounging on a Sunday but has extra storage and turns into a double bed (instead of a pull out mattress)! Perfect for visitors! Link here!

The ironic thing is that our apartment in London could very well be bigger than our apartment in Chicago! I can't wait to get settled instead of living out of our exploding suitcases!

I'll post more this week about our adventures thus far, but here are a few pictures to get you by...

First dinner in London- Barrafina, Soho



Regents square

Entrance to the Mall

Buckingham Palace

St. Paul's Cathedral

Cheerio!

<3 Mary