Don't Let Lunch Get Lost in Translation

As you might've guessed, there are some things we say in the States that don't mean the same thing across the pond. Here are some tips to help you not lose your lunch in translation:

Salad- in the U.S. has lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes and dressing. In the U.K. salad is something you put on your sandwich AKA just strips of lettuce.

Chips- in the U.S. chips mean Lays or Doritoes but in the U.K. chips are french fries.

Pudding- in the U.S. pudding is a creamy goopy dessert but in thr U.K. it's just a general word for all dessert, so for example tonight's pudding could be spice cake.

Also note that if you're going to drink with your meal, a pint is not equal to a beer, but is in fact 4 more ounces of alcohol than the typical 12 oz. bottle you might find at home in the States. This might not be important for your one drink over lunch, but it might be handy to know when you're watching your level of drunkenness on an oh-so-English pub crawl.

Unrelated to food, it might interest you to know:

Conditioner isn't something you wash your hair with but something you wash your clothes with and there's no such thing as dish detergent, what you're looking for is called washing up liquid. Clearly, not all British terms are superior...

Hall, anyone?

The closest thing to Hogwarts in the Muggle world has to be Oxford. This week formal hall began! This is when the students all come in and sit at huge long tables. Once we are there, the professors enter and we all stand as they walk past in their black robes and find their places at the head table perpendicular to ours. Then the headmaster says something in Latin and bangs a gavel and we sit down to be served a three-course meal.

Here's a view down my table to the profs and a closeup of lovely Lexi's face:

There they are in all their glory:

Aileen and Lexi both of whom live in my stair:

After dinner, we mosey into the JCR, the subsidized St Catz bar and lounge. Cider for 88p anyone?

Alexis and Erin H. in the JCR:

Lexi and me, AKA "the worst," as per usual:

Then, some people head out to the pubs from here but if you're me, you're still recovering from pneumonia so you might head home, and stop by study party in Erin B.'s room on the way:

Like Erin, Nick loves Oxford for giving him so much great reading material!!

After that I head home and get into this comfy bed with my penguin pal. In the morning, I roll over and flick the switch on this nifty new (far too expensive) kettle I bought. So beautiful, so convenient.

What is it with me and ending posts with appliances?

Introducing Home Away from Home

Here at St Catz, I live in a small suite with my roommate Yae Na who is a sociology major from Harvard. She's hard at work at her desk here :)

Behind that curtain is our bedroom:


You can see that Yae Na is showing me up in the decoration department, except for this calendar I bought on Tuesday at Blackwells with one Charlotte Martin who I LOVE. Every month has a picture of a precious piglet in some kind of artsy black and white photo wearing sunglasses or something. Isn't it adorable?


Yae Na and I also have our own bathroom with the tiniest sink I may have ever seen. Anyway, I live in 5.27 which stands for Stair 5, room 27 which is how you express where you live or where you work. That is, even though the building looks the same on the outside and all the stairs are connected, you have to go outside to get from one to the other and some are actually secretly offices and not dorm rooms at all and you would never know from the outside!

When I go outside, I find myself in the snowy quad on the other side of which, someone has made a snow man:


At Jesus College, Charlie showed me the toppled snow phallus on her quad which was funny. She thinks staff knocked it over because all the parents are dropping their kids off this week for the beginning of term.

This week is called week 0 so there aren't classes but returning students have "collections" which are a kind of exam that's taken at the beginning of term supposedly after revising over break. (I'm going to start posting an Oxford term of the day because there are so many different words for things. This post has a few in it...stay tuned!) So because there are no classes, we visiting students have time to settle in and see the town. Here are some pictures of Oxford town centre:




Covered market:

After walking around by myself, I met up with Charlie who helped me pick out a European cell phone and the pig calendar or as the English would say, a swine calendar. Here she is in Blackwell's enjoying an Earl Grey tea while we caught up about our lives:

Here we are together, reunited at long last:


Yesterday I went to town with Erin and bought groceries. She bought rainboots too and I wanted to take a picture but it was snowing and we were cold so I didn't. I'm sure she will feature in another post eventually.

When I got back I unloaded my tea and milk and sugar and my new mugs and attempted to make a nice hot cup of English tea. There is a kitchen on my floor and all kitchens come with a kettle and a toaster. Nice! The English love their tea and toast. Unfortunately, our kettle is broken or I was using it wrong so I had to resort to inferior microwave tea which proved quite complicated. Do you see how to use this microwave? I just pushed buttons until it would start:


Microwaves are one of the many things I didn't expect would be that different!

Here I am enjoying my tea anyway:

Oxford terminology recap:
collections: exams
stair: building is the equivalent except it's not quite accurate because the stairs are connected to each other, you just can't get from one to the other without going outside like you could in a hall.

Quiz yourself:
If I live in 15.2B, where do I live?

That's all for now!

Cheers!

Landed!

You know you're in the UK when the exits are labelled "way out."

I'm in the JCR right now, whatever that stands for, with my roommate Yae Na from Harvard. We are trying to figure out our new oxford email/network accounts and if you know me at all you know I'm not good at this at all!

The next few days look pretty quiet...enough time to finish up revising my paper, I hope! And of course of course, get well!

Pictures forthcoming.

Breathless and Grounded

I should be boarding a plane to London right now, but instead I'm in bed. X-Rays yesterday showed less pneumonia, but my condition was still deemed too risky to travel. Turns out it's a risky day to go to London, anyway! The country's been hit by blizzards that may delay flights and other travel plans. I may have pneumonia but at least I'm tucked up in bed right now instead of stuck in an airport.

If x-rays on Saturday show my pneumonia is clearing, the new plan involves me flying on Sunday night, arriving Monday morning the 11th and going to Oxford that day to be present for university orientation the following day. The part I'm missing is the 2-day London study abroad orientation organized by IFSA Butler, my study abroad program.

I wanted to put a picture in this post but I didn't think pneumonia-rich lung x-rays would appeal.

Cruel Oxford Gives Work Over Break!

No, what's actually cruel is that yesterday I went to the doctor after having a fever for about 5 days straight and got diagnosed with pneumonia! 4 days before departure! Awesome! I am on antibiotics now--something unpronounceable. The cool part is my pills MATCH. One blue one, one white one, and one blue and white one!

The work I got over break isn't bad but I've been putting it off because of being so so sick. Fevers make it hard to concentrate on words. Now that the days are closing in, however, I don't really have time for that especially since pneumonia won't be likely to go away before I leave.

Homework done so far:
*For Absurdist British Theater: Read The Homecoming and The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter I got that done before I got sick actually. They are really dark and meaningful plays.

*For Creative Writing: started drafting a proposal for my fiction project and I've started on the books I was recommended by my tutor for ideas and inspiration. I'm most of the way through The Lemon Table by Julian Barnes, and it's rather depressing. It's all about old people...and being old. I just started Dubliners though and it's really great! I'm enjoying it! Here's a picture of James Joyce, the author. He's looks like someone who might write awesome stories about Dublin, right?

Work I have yet to do:
For Absurdist British Theater: write a paper about those plays!
For Creative Writing: finish project proposal, and familiarize myself with the aforementioned books as well as Alice Munro's The Love of a Good Woman.

Oh yeaaaah, and clean my room and do laundry so I can pack...and get well...

Yikes!

Here's something that cheered me up today though: