Quiz Time!!

What Do You Mean by That, Anyway?©

The Game:

Here’s the deal: I will supply an every day word or phrase used in England and known generally throughout the UK. Of course I understand that different parts of England and the UK have different slang for things and that one word or phrase might have various meanings depending where the word is said, but this game is based on what I have seen, heard and experienced, so please, don’t take this too incredibly seriously.
Simply copy and past the list of words into a reply and put down what you think the words mean in England.

The Rules:

NO LOOKING THINGS UP! No Google, no reading back in my blog, no asking for help, no internet assistance… nothing.
Do not read other people’s answers before answering yourself.
After I have received the results from my initial quiz, which was sent via old school methods of written communication to friends and family back in the states, I will post an Explanation Guide.

Alrighty then... I present to you, THE LIST!

1. Pram
2. Jumper
3. Brekki
4. Tarmac
5. Bog Roll
6. Pants
7. Apples and Pears
8. Lift
9. Winge
10. Zebra Crossing
11. Sick
12. Lorry
13. Spot
14. Nappies
15. Lemonade
16. Football
17. Indicator
18. Pavement
19. Larry
20. Shandy
21. Sledge
22. Garden
23. Tea
24. Trolley
25. Serviette
26. Chips
27. Pudding
28. Alright
29. Biscuit
30. Minger
31. Fries
32. Chemist
33. Wellies
34. Crisps
35. Rumpy Pumpy
36. Trainers
37. Car Park
38. Dual Carriage Way
39. Ginger Kid

BONUS WORD: Wife (in New Castle)



WARNING: Some words may not be suitable for children... please preview answers before allowing children to view them.

When it Snows

Last week it snowed, and it was magnificent!

Being a Florida girl, and for the last six years a South Florida girl, snow has never been something that I have spent a lot of time around or in. Therefore, I found the two days of snow last week quite thrilling.

Now I've been to cold places before, the place I grew up in Florida has colder winters than I've generally experienced here in England, and I've been around snow when I have traveled to the Carolina's, Tennessee and California, but most of my snow experiences were a long time ago when I was a child, and while the snow was quite deep in California, it had already fallen.

On Thursday it snowed where I'm staying. Ben and I were supposed to go to Birmingham that day, but it was decided that we'd go the next day because we wouldn't have to worry about frozen roads. It wasn't a lot of snow, but it was beautiful and Ben and I built a snowman. I wore black gloves and held my hands out to catch the snow. Upon inspection I discovered that snowflakes actually look like the paper snowflakes children make!

On Friday we drove to Birmingham. It was supposed to rain all day, therefore cancellilng the chances of any snow... that's what the weathermen said... but when we were most of the way there, it started snowing. This made me very happy, but Ben sensed the impending danger and was less pleased about the weather conditions. By the time we reached the second or third stop we had to make, it was snowing at a decent rate, and while waiting in the car, I decided it would be best if I got out of the car and stood in the snow. I got a few strange looks from people hurrying from their cars to the nearby building, probably because I was just standing there getting snowed on and they all knew that as soon as I got in the car the snow would turn into extremely cold water and run from my head down my neck, back and shoulders, and Ben found it absolutely hilarious that I was just standing next to the car in the snow when he came out, but I had never been snowed on quite like that, and I found it rather amusing.
The snow that was falling in Birmingham that day was not like the delicate snowflakes that I had seen the day before; this snow was falling more in the form of large, clumsy flakes that made noise when they hit solid objects, the ground, and myself, and as the day progressed, they fell harder and harder and started causing a few problems.

Now you must understand that the following is not a personal opinion, that the pictures I am about to paint are not exaggerated and what they imply is a widely accepted fact among the English. I honestly had no idea exactly what I was in for and exactly how serious the radio DJ's were when they said something to the effect of, "America gets seven feet of snow every year, and they just clear the roads and get on with it, but we get seven inches of snow and everything just grinds to a halt. I mean, quite honestly, it's ridiculous." And he was absolutely right...

At first things didn't seem so bad; sure, traffic was going pretty slow, but certainly the roads would have been treated for the conditions, and people don't simply forget how to drive when it snows, right? Wrong. The roads were very slippery -- the few who didn't forget how to drive still had difficulties getting around and those who couldn't remember for the life of them what driving was in the first place caused all kinds of chaos... it was like they just didn't understand the conditions and the fact that they had to remain patient and take into consideration that everyone around them was going through the same thing. Those people were jerks and caused extra and unnecessary delay which had a domino effect, possibly doubling the hours of gridlocked traffic.

From what I gather, however, England simply doesn't cope well with snow and frozen conditions; it is not properly prepared for, people panic, schools close, offices close, people don't go to work, deliveries are not made, shops run out of food, traffic comes to a halt and then the people who grit the road so that it can be used safely get stuck in the traffic caused by the slippery conditions. Everything literally comes to a screeching halt and falls to pieces.

There were some interesting things to see, though... the bus slipping down the road, the Roving Bands of Able Young Men, and some other pretty sights in this winter wonderland.
I greatly enjoyed my day and evening in snowy, gridlocked Birmingham, although I don't think I'd love it so much if I were accustomed to it and got stuck in the traffic getting out of work, having my 15 minute trip home turn into a two hour crawl as many people broadcasted on the radio spoke about.

In any case, there was no denying that it was a winter wonderland, and that it was gorgeous.


Oh, and also...

Snow Kittens

Dear Grace and Lexi,

Hello. I know I haven't written, and I hope you haven't felt too abandoned, confused or disoriented, and I hope that you both know, somehow, that I miss you and think of you every day.

I often wish I had brought you with me (although I'm pretty sure customs definately wouldn't have let me in then), because a lot of the time, dispite the rain, I think you'd like it here.

But today I built a snowman, and while I was building this snowman, playfully kicking snow about, I thought about you both. I pictured each of you taking tentative steps in that cold powdery stuff, shaking it off your feet and looking generally displeased with the state of affairs. I pictured you both, especially Lexi, shivering and looking miserably cold in that weather, not understanding what happened to the warm tropical breezes (and disgusting heat) that you both know and love.

I watched Patch, one of the resident cats, trudge around somewhat uncomfortably, unhappy about the condition of his feet after touching the white stuff, and knew that your thin Florida coats would not be able to cope with the same kind of weather as Patch's thick outdoor English coat... even he was cold today!

No, my dears, it has proven time and again to have been the proper decision to leave you in your native land where you can stay warm and safe and comfortable, because here they only allow the dog to live inside and the two of you would have certainly felt even more abandoned if I had brought you and then made you stay outside, away from food, shelter, warmth and love.

Luckly for all of our sake's you have food, shelter, warmth and love where you're at, which is a much happier thought for me than the idea frost bitten kittens. I hope you'll give me the time of day when I see you again, although I won't hold my breath (namely because it'll be a couple more months).

With Love,
Joey

P.S. I have included these pictures for you so that perhaps you can understand why you'd hate it here.
XOXO

This is Smudge (no, I don't like him nearly as much as I like you two). He's used to the cold, but doesn't like the snow on his feet.





All of the white stuff is cold and wet. It sticks to you and then melts and causes cold water to get all over you.




This is a snowman; snowmen are made out of cold stuff that gets wet as the temperature gets warmer. The fact that the snowman exists means that it's cold, and the fact that it remains standing means that it's still cold. When the snowman falls down because it's gotten too warm for him to stand up, that means that it's cold and very wet.

Ze Germans

I have returned from my little trip to France and Germany armed with new perspective and self discovery.

Calais, France was nothing special; really just a place for the English to take advantage of the exchange rate and stock up on alcohol. It was fun, but it's not somewhere I'd be particularly interested in going again.

Germany, however, rocked my socks.
Connie, Waldemar (W's are pronounced as V's) and their three children, Robert, 19 (R's are pronounced "war"), Clemens, 16 and Mariele, 12 were our hosts, and they were fantastic.
Waldemar and the kids all spoke English rather well, Robert could read and translate Latin and Clemens is leaving in the summer to live in Mexico for a year. Connie speaks German, English, French and Italian, loves to travel and loves to show travelers everything she can during their stay. Therefore, Connie fed and watered us with local and traditional German food and drink and took us to the places the locals go, and Waldemar made sure we drank the right beer.

The family was bright, interesting and interested in other people, culture and language and had a very good general knowledge of the world. It didn't seem to me that differences between culture, language or personal preferences seemed in the least bit odd, strange or funny to them; rather, it appeared, from where I was observing, that they had at some point simply accepted the fact that all cultures and languages are different and that the people within those cultures are going to do and say things from a different perspective on the world than the perspective from within the German culture. Therefore, it seems to me, the norms of various cultures are immediately accepted as normal without question, and unless it is clear that something being explained is radically outside the norm for that culture, it is not surprising in the eyes of the Germans.

Of course my greatest exposure to the German culture was through this one family, and only for three full days, so perhaps I was just lucky enough to land in a really cool family.
But I have reasons to believe that education and the understanding of other peoples and cultures is of general national importance. One of my reasons for this is that, in the small towns that we visited, every German person that I came across was able to understand what I said and respond accordingly in English.
My main reason for believing that they have a keen interest in education, understanding and knowledge, however, is what I understand of their education system, which was a little too complex (and probably not explained as well as it could have been) for me to be able to properly repeat here in any sort of concise, coherent manner. What I can say completely clearly, though, is that it seems to be quite intense and very, very well rounded. There appears to be a big push toward study abroad, foreign exchange and language at a fairly young age, and the result is such that I hope to be able to expose my children to the same kind of things.
Basically, I learned that Germans like to learn, and that it makes them seem incredibly cool.

Other things I learned while in Germany:

- They have GREAT bread... like, omg, so delicious!
- And GREAT beer, duh.
- Also cheese.
- Germans are generally skinny people despite their consumption of lots of delicious bread, cheese and beer. I think it's because they walk a lot, and probably partly because it's cold (shivering burns calories, right?).
- German products are fantastic and very much my style: sleek, elegant, simple, functional and durable. Never have I found such a lightweight teaspoon that I couldn't bend, and never have I found a watch that was as beautifully perfect as the one I found while wandering around Gottingen -- so simple, functional and versatile, perfect for work or the Christmas ball. The jewelry is the same, simply gorgeous. My flatware, my watch and my favorite jewelry will hopefully one day come from Germany.
- Things in Germany are very, very clean and tidy, although I'm not sure that street cleaners actually exist, and trash disposal units are a very rare sight indeed.
- There are a lot of book stores, leading me to believe that books are popular.

Possibly the most important, relevant thing I discovered in my most recent short travels, however, is that it is advisable to go to the Irish Bar.

Gonna Getchya

When I came back from my trip to France and Germany on Sunday night, the 25th of January, the customs officer stopped the car, questioned me and made us miss our train because I'm a US citizen traveling for a few months.

I'm not certain if the problem is that US citizens are fleeing to the UK by the thousands to escape the ridiculously high US taxes and money sucking governmental ploys to financially drain citizens in any way possible, if they just don't like the US so much that they want to give young adult females traveling by themselves outside of their home country as much grief as possible in hopes of making them break down in tears and repent for the sins of their fuck of a country, or if they're just ignorant of the fact that tourists contribute to their current economic superiority and are therefore trying to discourage visitors simply because they don't like strange people in their country.

Whatever the case may be, the customs officer made sure to stamp my passport with the same "Question this Bitch" stamp that the last customs officer (finally) stamped my passport with after four hours of unnecessary grief, and made sure to tell me that should I leave the country again and try to come back in, the power of the two stamps combined would not be defeated by the mere holding of a one way ticket back to my God forsaken country, and that should I have anything less than 1) proof of a job eagerly awaiting my return, 2) proof of an empty household with wilted plants in dire need of my love, attention and immediate return, and 3) a one way ticket back to my God forsaken country, I would most certainly not be allowed back into the Best Country in the Whole Wide World, never mind allowed back in without a lengthy hold up and much questioning.

Of course it didn't really help that US customs didn't stamp my passport to show that I'd re-entered the US after my ten day trip back in July, 2006, and the customs officer kept telling me that there was no proof that I'd ever gone back to the US in the first place. I tried to explain that I could give multipule phone numbers for him to call and check, but he just kept flipping the pages of my passport and saying "There's nothing in here to suggest that you ever even went back into the US..." So then I thought about saying, "Look, there is nothing that would make me want to stay in England for that long anyway... you couldn't pay me to stay in the country for that long," but decided that he woldn't take that kindly, either, and that since it's pretty clear that the UK doesn't much like the US as it is, he would just use that as a reason to lock me up for four hours or so while they ran background checks on me at laughed at my expense.

Maybe I just look like a clever, manipulative, internationally deceptive snake of a woman out to destroy rival countries.


Also, the UK has ridiculously high taxes and money sucking governmental ploys to financially drain citizens in any way possible.

It was only cold for a couple of days, and while there was a little bit of snow in some parts of England, there was none where I'm at.

It is now actually rather warm (about 45-50 degrees F), and the sun is shining.

I think I'll go for a walk.