making fun of things you don't understand

I knew moving to another country would be different, and I tried to mentally prepare myself for the changes. Since we've been here, and moved away from the base, we've tried to do as many things here in our town, instead of relying on the comfort zone of the base (which really only so far include grocery shopping and finding necessities). There are obvious differences in like in the UK from life in the USA, and some of them I was ready for, but some of these differences are going to take me a while to get used to. for instance.....

I remember thinking "thank goodness they speak English" and never even really considered until much, much later (the moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow and couldn't understand a word they were saying over the loudspeaker), that while they DO speak the same language as me, there's a different accent coming out of the mouth of every person I talk to. It was cute at first, but now I find myself doing a lot of nodding and smiling, and generally feeling like a stupid foreigner. When we went to sign the papers to rent our house, we were told by the agent "oh, your landlord wants to come and meet you in person - she's from Liverpool! good luck understanding anything she says!" and I worried about the meeting for DAYS (honestly, hers has been the easiest accent for me to understand so far!). The guy who cut my hair recently (who is British), asked me how i was doing with all the different accents, and I just blurted out "I've really only understand half of everything that's been said to me since I got here" - thankfully, he just laughed, and then said something I totally couldn't understand. so I nodded and smiled.

It took me at least 3 trips to the grocery store here to understand what the girls at the register were asking me, (which is probably 6 trips less than it would take me to figure out what a cashier at a grocery store in Arkansas is saying to me, and THAT is if they are considerate enough to speak at all...but i digress...) - Now that I know what they are saying to me (and it's always the same things, in the same order, like a very well rehearsed and politely delivered script): "are you alright with your packing?" and "do you have a nectar card?" and "thank you! bye!" and even though I still have no flipping clue what a nectar card even IS (but I'm positive i DON'T have one!) I know exactly how to respond without looking like an asshole. See, I WANT to be able to understand what people are saying to me. I WANT to be able to hold a conversation and not just stare at the person with one of those giant "I-obviously-have-no-idea-what-you-just-said-but-I'm-gonna-nod-anyway" smiles on my face...it's not a good look for me...i also tend to squint my eyes and get "mean" eyebrows when I'm trying to compute stuff like that, and that just leaves all sorts of room for misinterpretation..nothing good can come from not understanding people. you end up looking rude or disinterested, and they end up thinking you're some american jerk with a bitchy look on her face.

I'm not knocking British accents OR British people - in fact, i thoroughly enjoy the people here, and so far they have been delightful and beyond polite and helpful, and I think the accents are GREAT, and almost any time I can hear someone speak with one, I just eat it up, but my ears and my brain need to do some catching up so we can navigate a little better. It's harder than I thought it would be - they talk very fast, and sometimes pronunciations are different than what I'm used to and it throws me off.....I guess it will take time to get used to.

I'm also having trouble with the fact that there are so many door-to-door sales people. every single day it's something else, and sometimes it's more than just one person showing up, ringing the door bell, and trying to sell us stuff.

In fact, on the night we moved in, a guy was at our door within minutes of us getting here, asking us to change our energy provider. the avon lady has been here twice this week that i know of. tonight at almost 9:00, we heard a knock on our door. who the hell goes around to people's houses at that time of night? I realize people have jobs to do, but that's a little much. they are also constantly dropping things in our mail slot....ugh. the mail slot....

I was a serious fan of the mail slot when we first got here. I thought it was "charming" or some such nonsense, but now i want to rip it off the door. do you want to know what the most irritating sound in the world is? it's being asleep, and woken up to the sound of the flaps of your mail slot clanking and squeaking, and crappy free press (and they have a LOT of free press around here) and junk mail crashing to the ground.

I'm complaining too much. sorry. let me now focus on things that I don't necessarily hate, but that I DO find quite odd:

*they love barbecue sauce here. I don't understand it, and at first I thought it was just a McDonald's thing, but it's everywhere. it's as common as ketchup is in America. they don't, however, seem to share the same affection for buffalo sauce as I do, which is unfortunate.

*as much as they love barbecue sauce, they apparently love sweet corn ten times more.

imagine every food you've ever loved. now picture it with sweet corn.

huh?

you think i'm kidding, or maybe exaggerating? last night we ordered take out from a place that puts sweet corn on pizza. SWEET CORN.

i WISH i was making this up.

*the trash schedule, or really, the lack of "schedule"
....do you want to know what is in my garage right now? about 8 bags of trash. before that there were 3 times as many, but we've been hauling it off and dumping it ourselves because, try as we might, we can't figure out when the hell the trash people come to pick up - we found a "schedule" online, but learned pretty quickly that there is little truth to it - i don't know how the other people in our neighborhood know when it's being picked up, and we've tried to "stalk" them to watch for when they put THEIR bins out, but they are too sneaky for us apparently. i feel like this is some kind of neighborhood hazing, or some big, smelly practical joke that we aren't in on yet.

*there's no garbage disposal in our house....and apparently, that's pretty normal here. i never thought of a garbage disposal as a "luxury," but i'm pretty sure the only people in the UK with garbage disposals are Elton John and Posh Spice, and they are both too rich to even go into their own kitchens and fully appreciate them. the lack of garbage disposals baffle me the same way the lack of air conditioning does. america is so much more comfy, y'all.

there are loads of other things, i'm sure, but my mind is too blown right now to address them all.....stay tuned.