I was standing in my flat room for the first time. The curtains were open and revealed the grey British sky outside. The sun was setting and it was starting to get dark, so I reached for the light switch and tried to flip it up. It was already up though. I flicked the switched down and then up again, but still the light would not come on. I began to panic, it was going to be dark and I was exhausted and didn't want to deal with going and getting a new bulb. Out of desperation, I flipped the switch down, leaving it for a second. Thankfully, the light flickered on. This was a trend with all light switches in the flat. Apparently, light switches in England are backwards. My flatmate, Fiona, and I were chatting when a fly started buzzing around. My window was cracked open and the fly had come in. "Why don't these windows have screens?" I said offhandedly. Fiona gave me a look I would soon become quite familiar with: the furrowed brow look. The look that told me when I was saying something purely 'American.' "Screens?" I repeated. She shook her head like she didn't understand. I gestured wildly at the window, unsure how to explain such a common occurrence. "Screens. You know, screens." She shook her head no. "It's like a mesh that you put over the window to keep bugs out," I finally explained. "We don't really have those. We don't get all that many bugs." "Could you hand me that black purse over there?" "You call this a 'purse?'" A line was growing behind me and the cashier clearly wanted to keep it moving. "Four pounds forty," she informed me. Four pounds forty. You can do this, I told myself. As fast as I could, I unzipped the change pocket in my wallet and dumped some of the strange coins onto my palm. There are no bills (or 'notes') for just one pound. The newer pounds are gold and silver, but the older ones were just silver which made them look like the ten and twenty pence pieces. Pounds are heavier though, I had quickly figured that out. I counted them out. One.. two... three.. four! The forty would be the difficult part. I grabbed what I thought were two twenty pence pieces and offered her the cash. She dug through the small pile. "You're twenty p short, dear," she said. She had heard my accent though, so I think she understood that this wasn't my native money. "Do you have another two of these?" Conscience of the line behind me, I grabbed two silver coins at random and handed it to her. "Now that's too much," she chuckled. "Jelly!" "Jell-o!" The school gave me a dictionary on the first day. Not only do English people sound different than Americans, but they sound entirely different depending on where in the country they're from. Americans tends to think all British people sound 'posh' or like people from London who enunciate most of their words. Those people are mostly in the south though, and Sunderland is far north. The area of Sunderland speaks 'Mackem,' which has different slang words than the rest of the country and typically under-pronounces words or adds unnecessary extra letters to them. My flat has hung out with local Mackems a few times, and while they're pretty easy to understand when talking to the group, when they talk to each other it sounds like another language. Even other English people, not from this area, will struggle to understand. Truly, there is not greater comfort as a foreigner than hearing an incomprehensible sentence and seeing that the natives are as confused as you. "How are you cold, you're wearing a sweater," I said. My friend grimaced. "Sweater?" "Yeah, a sweater." "I hate that word," he said. "'Sweater.' This is a jumper." "Your accent is mint, mate."
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Amy Golden
Amy will be spending the academic year at the University of Sunderland in England studying journalism. Archives
February 2018
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