Two Months

Today marks two months since I moved to the UK. In some ways it feels as if I have been here longer, and in others it feels like I am still just getting my feet wet. This week I received my National Insurance number, which is basically the same thing as a Social Security number. I guess you could say that now I am definitely an official resident of the UK because now I can pay taxes to the British government.

I still feel like I speak a completely different language. I needed chicken broth for a recipe and Jason was going out to get a paper so I asked him to pick me up some chicken broth. He came back with condensed cream of chicken soup. We went to the grocery store and I asked him to point me toward the soup, I found a can of chicken broth but to my surprise the word "broth" here means exactly the opposite of what it means in America. In America chicken stock and chicken broth both mean "chicken flavored water". Here, chicken broth is chicken soup and chicken stock is chicken flavored water. Add this difference in dialect in with the fact that I was grocery shopping with a man and you have a married couple standing in the soup aisle of the grocery store trying to figure out what they call "chicken flavored water" here in this country and where they might keep it in a grocery store.

This seems to be a conversation we have over and over again and its a good thing we are very patient with each other because every time we go into a store it seems like the thing I am looking for is not in the place I would expect it to be and after explaining it to a sales associate while they look at me like I am either crazy or just fascinating they finally decode my secret language and have a "Eureka! You mean bobbledy boos!" moment and then point me in the right direction. It seems to me even the simplest of things have a different name, come in different packaging and in the case of food almost always come in strange flavors. If anything this experience of describing things has made it clear to me at times how arbitrary products names are on both sides of the pond. I find myself so often having to break down something into descriptives and then I am always left wondering "Why on earth do we call it zucchini?"

There are still a few items that I simply can't find the name for. For example, it is autumn and I am naturally craving some hot apple cider. Much to my frustration, the term "cider" is already taken and is my favorite alocholic beverage. Cider here is a cold carbonated alcoholic apple beverage. I asked Jason the other day if he knows where I could find "cloudy apple juice" or "unfiltered apple juice" and he seemed to be drawing a complete blank. I haven't given up faith that at least by the time winter rolls around I will have identified what they call cider here and I will be enjoying some mugs of hot cloudy apple juice.

That wraps it up for this week, next week I promise I will post on Monday. Jason was home for a long weekend and we finished painting our bathroom. Once we have installed new fixtures I will post some photos of the transformation. Thanks for reading!