As I have been here in Wales much longer now, very little surprises me anymore. I know the slang for Wales as well as or better than I do Canada. I am starting to have to think about the correct Canadian terminology when speaking to friends back home. I still have yet to pick up any aspect of the accent though. It has been hard to think up new topics to write in these blogs because the novelty has worn off but lucky for me my partner has just moved over here and has started reminding me of the Quirks or Wales all over again.
Though my American family still have Thanksgiving, around here Christmas comes the week of Halloween. I love Halloween and dressing up is my favourite thing to do but I am also a last minute shopper, usually making my costume day of. This gets complicated in the UK because Halloween isn't so big here and usually the day by October 30th, store have taken Halloween decorations and supplies out and put Christmas decorations and supplies in. Being from North America I find this WAY TOO EARLY as there are still 2 months to go!
I have a theory as to why this might be though. I think in Canada around this time we are just getting snow and at least as children we are excited about the endless possibilities this brings! There are so many activities that you can go in the snow to stay occupied. In Wales, there is rain. not snow. Rain brings less fun activities (though I am not arguing that rain isn't fun some of the time). Getting excited about Christmas and having Christmas markets and Winter Festivals with rides and games and Mulled wine, make up for the lack of snow, and the sooner the better!
If it lifts those November blues then I say why not! Embrace the  excitement that the Winter Holidays bring! Happy Holidays!

Peanuts Vs Monkey Nuts

In Wales, peanuts in the shell are called Monkey nuts but out of the shell they are peanuts. Fun!

Image taken from: http://www.tourabsurd.com/monkey-nuts/

Welsh: Educating their Drinkers

 

If you are a drinker with a curious mind then it takes very little time to tell that all bottles of alcohol sold in Wales have two warnings on them. Each tells you how many units of alcohol you are drinking and the recommended daily values for men and women. They also have a warning to pregnant woman not to drink. If these warnings were put on bottles in the US or Canada then I wouldn’t blink an eye at them because everybody is paranoid of being sued however I feel as though they are a little out of character here. From my experience there are not many people in the UK that would follow these drinking regulations (the recommended units of alcohol not the pregnancy warnings- I am not suggesting ANYTHING about soon to be mothers here). Cardiff is rumoured to be the largest drinking city in the UK. It is almost encouraged for people to have fall-down-drunk drinking stories.   It makes me wonder how many British make fun of our coffee cups that have “Caution: contents is very hot” written on them. Country specific worries I guess.

Thinking of summer on this cold day.....

I wrote a couple of blogs over the summer but never put them online so these are a little dated...

After all my entries on how poor the weather has been over here we have had some amazing weather over the past couple weeks. I feel like they picked Britain up and moved it a bit closer to the equator with a large clear umbrella over our heads so no rain could get us. With good weather, comes tanned and fake tanned welsh men and women. Being that I was funemployed for the first part of this summer I spent much of my time at the city parks. The parks in Cardiff are lovely- you almost feel as though you are not in the city anymore but instead somewhere between the secret garden and alice in wonderland’s queen of hearts garden. They are the magical place where all welsh stuck in the city come to do pretty well anything they want. The other day there was a small festival in the park closest to me and as I walked I was watching a dog show, viewing a sports camp and became the audience participation for a medieval fight. Then came the unorganized activities of exercise camps running around, people tanning and reading, then the groups of people enjoying a case of beer and a barbeque or the line-up of children at an ice-cream truck. Off to the side, the elderly couples watched from the shade and the solo runners find serenity on the track. Parks are truly the meeting place for all social groups.

It’s been a while since I last wrote a blog entry, I apologise for this, as I was writing exams, moving, getting tattoos (plural) and learning how to relax and take care of myself (two straight months of studying also means two months of make shift meals and increased stress levels) . It’s been harder and harder to find the unique aspects about living in the UK as now I am starting to feel they are getting more and more common. I have finally trained myself to say “toilet” instead of "washroom” and “Plaster” instead of “Band-aid”. I still learn new things everyday such as “chemist” versus “pharmacy” however those are less and less common the more time I spend here.

 I am now living on the other side of Cardiff (Wales) where I have no school friends, no idea how to pay my heat or water and the only Internet I have is around the corner at my new favourite pub. It’s the first time that I have felt like I am living here instead of visiting. So far I have learned that drunk people are bold but friendly (Not a new concept anywhere I suppose but even more so here). Almost anyone is very happy coming up and talking to me about whatever interests them. The most common one that I have got so far is “what is so important that you need to bring a computer to the bar?” Fair question although the guy beside me brought his work here too so it’s not as uncommon as you think. 

I do truly appreciate everyone’s good nature and welcoming attitudes. Wales is small enough that you can feel a part of a community and yet big enough that you can go to the pub around the corner and sing your heart out at karaoke night and not know anyone in the audience (not saying that I have done that- just theoretical so far). Let’s just hope these new connections I make can help me find a job. Fingers crossed.

The challenges of packaging

While grocery shopping I often get a kick out of the information on food and clothing items. I am used to there being a few different translations of ingredients and instructions on packages (mainly French and English since I am from Canada) but not as many as there are over here. It makes perfect since because many of the countries over here speak different languages and are close enough to over lap in local food distributors but i never imagined that  there would be 18+ languages on the back of each product. If I ever need to learn another language I am going to start with a grocery store...

 

As you already know as common knowledge or if you have read my blog (because it comes up a lot in my other entries) that it rains a lot in the United Kingdom. From what I understand this is one of the rainiest years in a while too. So knowing all of this I found it rather entertaining the other day when I walked through the aisles at Tesco Extra (the store for everything possible that you could ever want) and found there to be an entire row dedicated to sunscreen, bronzer and after sun. The bronzer makes since because it’s a common trend in the UK to have a slight orange glow induced by spray tan or tanning creams but the sunscreen and after sun was a total surprise to me.  I understand that yes you can get UV radiation in cloudy whether too, but even in the hottest brightest summers in Canada you don’t usually see entire rows devoted to sun protection products and that is in a country that actually sees the sun more than 12 hours a week. It really confused me until I talked to my roommate about it and he said it was because people in the UK really like to go on vacation to warm places. TADA! Of course! That made sense to me. There are very few weeks that I don’t think at least once about how much I would prefer to be in a warm bright dry place. Even coming back to Canada to find snow on the ground and a brisk wind seemed like heaven because there was sun. I needed sunglasses! Back to the main point, I now understand the point of the mass quantities of sunscreen but I guess the traveler in me is curious as to how many bottles of sunscreen are abandoned at airport security because their owners forgot to pack them in their checked bags or maybe I’m the only one that buys things like that at the destination because I am not confident enough in my packing organization.