I’ve been sitting on this for a while and adding to it slowly, but I figure it’s about time to post it: a list of British phrases translated to American terms, heh. Enjoy:

pants = underwear (underpants)
trousers = pants
trainers = sneakers
boots = cleats (usually soccer)
wellingtons/wellies = mud boots
boot = trunk of a car
football = soccer
engaged = busy (as in a telephone line) or occupied (as in a restroom)
to ring someone = to call someone
loo/W.C./toilet = restroom/bathroom
tube/underground = subway
chips = french fries
crisps = chips
cheers = mostly used for “thanks,” they just say it a lot in general
ta = thanks
it’s alright = you’re welcome
you alright? = how are you?
plaster = band-aid
dodgy = sketchy
torch = flashlight
bacon = canadian bacon? sort of? dunno…
streaky bacon = real bacon
petrol = gasoline
match = game (i.e. soccer game)
well + adjective = very + adjective
lie in = sleep in
fit = cute
bird = chick
bloke = guy
mobile (phone) = cell (phone)
rubbish = garbage/trash
bollocks = crap
thick = dense/stupid
hoover = vacuum
zed = z (i.e. how they pronounce the letter)
trolley = shopping cart
lorrey = truck/tractor trailer
car park = parking lot
poof = a gay guy
camp = effeminate
knackered = tired
to take the piss/mick (out of someone or something) = to mock/make fun (of someone or something)
wicked = awesome/cool/etc
mint = sweet/cool/etc
post = mail
to skive = to skip/cut (i.e. class, work)
everything’s gone pear-shaped = everything’s gone downhill/gone to pot
dinner = lunch
tea = dinner
to blag = to BS
parcel = package
to nick something = to swipe/steal something
to whinge = to whine/complain
to get/be pissed = to get/be drunk
take-away = delivery (food)
a brew = a cup of tea
queue = line (of people)

Some things, like the pants = underwear and dinner/tea = lunch/dinner, aren’t true for everyone, but they are for a lot of people — it depends where they come from and what they call those things at home. The pants thing still throws me off — I keep forgetting to say trousers for pants and keep having people think I mean underwear. Just imagine someone constantly saying “underwear” when they really mean pants. The results are amusing.

Firstly: Finally, London photos! Sorry it took so long, I had a lot and needed to make time to sit down and weed through them. I tried to only upload the best ones, but I still wound up uploading about 150 photos out of roughly 500 photos and video clips that I took while there.

Secondly, if you don’t know already, my camera got stolen last week. I went to Blackpool the weekend of the fifth, and we spent all day Saturday at the Blackpool Pleasure Beach, an amusement park, and stayed through the evening to see the Guy Fawkes Day/Bonfire Night fireworks. That evening, before the fireworks, after walking from one ride (where I know I got off with my camera still in my possession) to another, I realized I no longer had my camera, which had been in its bag in my front jacket pocket. We passed through a crowd on our way to the second ride, so I’m pretty sure someone took it out of my pocket. Which really sucks, because I just got the camera a year and a half ago, just got the camera bag last year, and just got the spare battery and high-speed 1gb memory card (both of which were in the bag) for my birthday this year. I’m still really angry about it, but there’s nothing I can do. I wish I’d been more careful and aware, but I guess shit happens, as they say.

So, now I’m in the market for a new camera, because I really would like to take photos of the places I’m going! Luckily, several people took photos while we were in Blackpool, so that wasn’t a complete loss. Manchester last week was too brief a visit to take any good photos anyway, and a friend of mine from there (Jess Simpson — seriously, that’s her name!) says we were in the scummy part as well, so it wasn’t very interesting. I’m going to Edinburgh next weekend for Thanksgiving and probably won’t have a camera in time for that, but hopefully I’ll be able to get photos off one of the other Americans going. I guess the upshot of not taking a camera is that I can just enjoy without feeling the need to take photos of everything. I’m really looking forward to Edinburgh, everyone says it’s terrific, and it should be cool to meet up with a bunch of Americans to celebrate Thanksgiving and to explore the city and hang out. I actually only just finalized plans for it at sort of the last minute yesterday/today. Yesterday because it was the deadline to say I would be going (it’s organized by the University of California exchange programs for UC students and their guests), and today because I almost couldn’t find a hostel with availability on Saturday night — all the good ones seem to have been all full on that night for weeks in advance, I have no idea why.

Speaking of Edinburgh, I’ll now be heading there for New Year’s as well! One of my neighbors here in Litherop, Catherine Stewart (how Scottish is that name!), is from Scotland and her brother has a flat in Edinburgh, as he’s attending the University of Edinburgh (damn ASU for not giving me a slot there…). Apparently the New Year’s celebrations in Edinburgh are called Hogmanay and are absolutely massive, so she’s getting together whoever wants to go stay in her brother’s flat and check out the festivities there. Even better is the fact that this year the festival is featuring a big Catalan theme, which means lots of performers and food and art and so forth from Catalonia, the region in Spain that my dad is from! It’s quite a lucky coincidence that they’re doing that this year (in the past they have had India and France as their international centerpieces), and I’m looking forward to it. I still don’t know where I’m going to go for winter break leading up to that, though. Need to figure it out soon, it’s only three weeks away!

Anyway, it’s late now and I have classes again this week, so I need to head off to sleep. Oh yes, two weeks ago we put on group performances to end the first part of our acting module for the term, and last week we had off from classes in order to write a 2,000 word supporting file. Actually, to make another Edinburgh connection, my group is considering revisiting our piece, expanding and polishing it, and potentially taking it to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in the summer. If you don’t know, the Edinburgh Fringe is one of the largest theatre festivals in the world and is in fact the original fringe festival (there are other big annual fringes now, in New York, Seattle, etc.), so it would be terrific exposure as well as an amazing experience. I really hope we can do it, it would be really incredible just to be there during the festival, let alone perform for it!

So, yeah, except for my camera getting stolen, things are good: I’m performing (got cast in a production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses — Dangerous Liaisons — and I’m auditioning for Bat Boy the Musical next week), I’m travelling, I’m experiencing, and I’m having a good time.

Where do I even begin? Okay, first of all, if you hadn’t realized, I’m in London. If you’d like to skip ahead to the exciting stuff, like me being detained and searched outside Buckingham Palace on suspicion of terrorist activities, that’s day two. I should probably cut down on the excruciating detail anyway, since it’s costing me £1.50 to use the internet at the hostel for an hour. Anyway, to begin, I got in yesterday and checked in to the incredibly small, four-bed, dorm-style room (i.e. smaller than my single-person dorm room at Bretton) at the Ace Hotel in Kensington. It’s actually a pretty clean place, not to mention dirt cheap (about $42 for two nights), but sharing a tiny, tiny room with other people really blows; more on that later. After I checked in, I headed straight out, got myself a combination padlock for my locker at the hostel and a sandwich from a Tesco supermarket. Backpack secured and hunger satiated, I went downtown on the Picadilly line, got off at Leicester Square, and started walking. I spent an hour or two in the National Portait Gallery, which was interesting, but it’s pretty big, and looking at portraits and historical summaries of various lords and ladies can get old. I enjoyed one portrait in particular, though, of Sarah Siddon, who was — I believe — a 17th century actress and the top dramatic actress of her time. It’s just a very striking painting, of her apparently in a midnight glade with a drama mask in one hand and a dagger in the other. After leaving the Gallery, I discovered I was in Trafalgar Square, so I went ahead and took a load of photos. Walking up another street, I found myself at Picadilly Circus, which really doesn’t seem to have anything do with circuses at all, unless you’re talking about the loads of stores and people. It really reminds me a great deal of Times Square in New York; it’s incredibly similar. Like Times Square, it has a bunch of big, floodlight bright, multistory, animated ads. Also like Times Square, it has a big Virgin Megastore, a bunch of important theatres nearby, and a branch of a big fast food chain overlooking the whole thing (except it’s Burger King instead of McDonald’s).

After I’d gotten my fill of Picadilly Circus and paid through the nose (seriously, it was ridiculous) for a Pizza Hut individual pizza, I headed back to the hostel because I was pretty pooped from travelling and walking around all day. Getting around is seriously tiring, mainly on my feet and lower back, and I actually think I must have spent at least half of the past two days moving from place to place just because of the distance I’ve covered and because of Underground station closures. The two other people in my room happen to also be Americans, who are on the last leg of an around-the-world trip, mainly by cruise ship. They seem nice enough, but are also a little strange, and trying to sleep last night was hell. First of all, the one guy, David, a radiology doctor in his residency in Manhattan, kept saying he was “still on Hong Kong time,” and so went to bed really early. I tried to be quiet and keep the lights down so as not to disturb him, but he had a sleeping mask and earplugs anyway, which (note to self!) are a really damn good idea for making staying at a hostel more bearable. I went to bed early myself, since I was flat-out exhausted, but was woken up an hour or two later when his “travelling companion,” Cassandra, a woman from (I think) Philadelphia who just passed her bar exam, came in. After that, I was woken up a few hours later again, dripping with sweat, because the room felt like a damn sauna, even though I had turned down the heat before I went to bed because it was already warm. Next, I was woken up about 4:30am by David fumbling about and then asking me if I thought the room was hot, and saying that I must have turned up the heat by accident. Cassandra spoke up from her bunk and said that, no, it had been her who turned up the heat and that he should apologize for accusing me, which he did. Finally, I was woken up about 8am by the two of them getting up and going to breakfast, which I did as well. I also felt like complete crap because of course I had barely had two continuous hours of sleep the night before (and only slept about four hours Thursday night). Thankfully, after breakfast I was able to go back and crash for about three hours uninterrupted.

That brings me to today, which was a very full and rather exciting day, to say the least. I headed out with the intention of going to Camden Market, as quite a few people have said it’s worth visiting. Getting there proved to be quite something, though, as the two Underground stations nearest the hostel were both closed for maintenance for the entire day. The first one directed me to walk to the next one, which then directed me to walk to another one, which I finally found. I took the tube as close as I could get to Camden, but couldn’t go all the way because the entire Northern line is closed. Finally, after some more walking and a bus ride, I made it to Camden and Camden Market. Which is a complete zoo. Truly a circus of humanity, there hordes and hordes of people and stalls and shops crammed up against each other. I’ll post photos when I get back to Bretton, but I’m sure they won’t do it justice. At any rate, it is completely overwhelming, and the multitudes of people don’t really make it easy to window shop. If it’s drugs you’re looking for, though, that’s a piece of cake — walking along the main road, I was approached literally continuously, about every two minutes, by people quietly asking if I wanted to score or wanted marijuana or skunk or whatever. I’m not entirely sure how they can get away with it, but with the masses of people and the fact that I didn’t see any police around, I guess they’re not too worried.

After a couple hours and some decent fish and chips, I’d had my fill of Camden Market for the day, and headed downtown (Camden is to the north of downtown London). I got off at the corner of Green Park, which contains or is adjacent to Buckingham Palace. I walked through it and arrived at Buckingham Palace, which is really wholely unimpressive. It’s like a bunch of big rectangular blocks of granite, not really that exciting. I took a bunch of pictures anyway, and then wandered around to try and see if there was a view of the other side. There wasn’t, but I took a few pictures of the incredible large spikes and hoops of barbed wire topping the walls around the palace, and that’s where the day gets even more interesting. On my back from the walled-up side of the palace, three police officers walked towards me on the sidewalk, told me I’d been observed on security cameras taking suspicious photos and that they’d like to ask me some questions, see the photos, and search me. Wow. Being stopped, questioned, and searched on suspicion of terrorist activities by police outside of Buckingham Palace while on your own in the middle of a foreign city is pretty damn freaky, let me tell you. They were really quite nice, which is something I have to say that I’ve noticed about police here in Britain, but they were armed, which is unusual based on the ones I’ve seen around Yorkshire, and they took down all my information, searched my bag, and asked about the photos.

Well damn, so much for brevity — I have two minutes left, so I need to wrap up now. I did a few more things today, but those were the most exciting. I’ll finish up when I get home tomorrow, which I’m really looking forward to. Travelling on your own and on the cheap is exhausting.

Hello there, friends… family… random visitors… from England! As I type this, I am travelling north on a GNER train from London to Leeds at 11:20am local time, or 6:20am US Eastern, on Monday the 19th of September. In a nice touch, they provide power outlets for laptops and mobile phones and – being the prepared traveller that I am – I have the proper converter plug handy, so I thought I would get started in writing about my travels thus far. Apparently they also generally provide wireless internet access – but I only know this because they announced their apologies that it would not be available on this trip. :( Considering the exorbitant fee I paid for this ticket and the horrendous exchange rate I got for my US cash at the airport, though, I am happy for any small luxuries.

Returning to being a prepared traveller for a moment, however: First of all, we left rather late for the airport. Entirely my fault for not packing early. On the way to the airport, I realized first that I had forgotten the blanket that I was going to take with me and then that I had forgotten my electric razor. The razor irks me the most, I think, because it’s a little thing that will drive me crazy. Hopefully my parents will be able to send it over, or I’ll be able to pick up a hand razor for a reasonable price. Besides those couple things I forgot (hopefully those are the only things..), what I did wrong was pack too much. I knew I had, but I didn’t have time to weed things out a bit; I had to leave for the airport or I’d miss my flight. I seem to do that rather frequently with packing, I pack too much stuff. The thing is that the suitcases don’t seem that heavy when you just lift them by themselves briefly, but carrying or pulling them around the airport gets to be a royal pain in the arse (hehe, arse).

Ah, I have to interject here to say that we just passed a herd of cattle out to pasture. Which, I don’t know, I guess I find of note because I plan to stay away from beef in England on account of mad cow disease. And there go some lambs.. There is a surprising amount of farmland out here. I would have thought cities and towns would be closer together, but we have been passing farmland for about fifteen minutes now. I would take pictures to show you, but I’ve tried and discovered that a speeding blur isn’t very interesting. We must be travelling fairly fast.

In general, coming from New England as I have, the land and towns really don’t seem that much different. The architecture is of a different style, to be sure, and things look different – like their subway, the underground – and of course there are the accents, but all in all the differences are rather like going from one city to another, going from, say, New York to Boston. From what I’m seeing on the train, the land is also very similar – similar vegetation and plots, except that there isn’t the sheer space that there is in the US; plots are right next to each other, without any wild space in-between. No, I think the biggest differences I will see will be in the customs and people’s cultural attitudes. I’ve felt uncomfortable the whole trip so far, because it is strange. The money is different, the accents are different and not always understandable, and people behave a bit differently. Mainly, I think, I’m worried about doing the right things and not sticking out like a sore thumb.