Research

The past few weeks I have completely ignored the blogger world. I haven't really read any (sorry) and I certainly haven't written much. I know a few weeks isn't that long, but I'm just writing a quick hello to mention that it will probably continue for a little while. Why you may ask? Well, I've traded my blogging hours in favor of devoting my every waking moment to research. More on that another time.

Not too much going on. Zariah broke her collar bone last night when she fell out of bed. We spent the better part of the day at the hospital for that. I've decided that the ER or A&E (Accident & Emergency as it's known here) is one of my least favorite places on the face of the planet.

We lost one of our laptops this week. Thankfully I had most of my info backed up, but it had been a few months and I lost a few recent projects and some of the most recent pictures. Ugh. That's twice for us in about a year with different computers! What are the chances right? Learn from my misfortune. Don't let any of that precious information or those priceless photos get lost because you didn't have them backed up.

London & Bath

I have been wanting to write about a little excursion we had last week. I don't have pictures right now, but I will post some when I do. Brent's sister was in London with her husband and his family, and we decided to drive down and see them. So we went to London for the first time. It was a very short trip, but we saw Big Ben, the exterior of Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliment. Then we went to The National Gallery and The British Museum. Both amazing, but I must say that the highlight for me was getting to see the Rosetta Stone. I was also able to see Les Miserables in the Theatre District. It was incredible and I throughly enjoyed it, but it would have been much better if Brent could have come with me. He pretty much made me go. Does anyone actually believe that? Well, it's true, sort of. Of course I wanted to see it, but I knew I wouldn't enjoy it as much without him there, and it just seemed entirely unfair for just one of us to go, so I was contented to spend the evening together in our hotel room. But anyone who knows my husband understands why that didn't happen.

There was so much we didn't get to see. Like a really cool exhibition called "Psycho Buildings" and London Bridge(which I thought was relocated to Arizona, but it is still listed as a tourist attraction here). But even though I know we didn't see enough of London, there wasn't that magic, falling in love feeling there. I really enjoyed myself, but I didn't fall in love with London. I'm not sure why that is. I wonder if it is because we were here so long without seeing it. I remember the first week we were here in Manchester, we just walked around downtown and kept poking each other in the ribs to "Look at that building!" or "Look at that street!". And London is similar to Manchester, just much larger and on a much grander scale, so maybe we've just absorbed that British ambiance to the point that we also saw how big, loud and dirty the city is. I'm not saying I didn't like it and there are parts that are quite lovely and I really do enjoy big, loud and dirty cities, but I guess in the end it was just a bit of a let down.

After London we decided to make a whole day out of traveling home. We drove out to Stonehenge. Also a bit of a let down. It's pretty cool being there in the presence of a formation that is 4500 years old, but all you do is just stand there an look at them. It might have been more enjoyable if we had been able to listen to the recorded HeadSet they have available, but Zariah wouldn't have been very interested in that. It was cool and I am glad we saw it, but also a bit of a let down.

After Stonehenge we drove out to Bath. The road to Bath was under construction so we went a different way, and boy am I glad we did. The scenery in and out of the city was exquisite. Then there Bath itself. I don't know exactly how to tell you about it. Brent wants to live in the country in the middle of nowhere and I want to live in a city. Bath is the first city that we both immediately agreed, "I want to live here!" It is a fairly big city. It was originally built by the romans to take advantage of the natural springs which were rumored to have healing properties. Ill people from all over the country were sent there to recover. After the romans pulled out, it became the social capital of all England (Jane Austen's time). Then the social capital was moved and things died down and there was just Bath. A gorgeous city with an incredible history.

Almost all the building are built with Bath Stone, even the new ones, to maintain congruency. The whole city maintains a certain feel of peace and beauty, and it's easy to find a quiet place to sit in thought or people-watch or enjoy crowded areas of town. We just fell in Love. We first walked around the Roman baths, the Abbey and all through the downtown area. We went to The Jane Austen Centre and upstairs to the Regency Tea Room. We had Tea with crumpets and scones. We took a tour around the city and finished off our day with visiting Sally Lunn’s, for one of her famous buns and some lemon curd.

On the way out of the city there was again some of the most incredible scenery which made for an great ending to our little excursion. We really did enjoy ourselves the whole time, but traveling is so much better when you have no expectations.

American Accent

In my last post I wrote that I was singing a song with my daughter called "Wind the Bobby Knob". It is a song I had never heard before coming here. I learned it at the first mother-toddler group I went to and I asked them to articulate the words three times saying "Wind the what?" and they kept saying "bobby knob". I had no idea what a "bobby knob" was and they said that the song had originated from the factories because they used to wind the bobby knob.

After a comment from Lizza asking about the song, I started looking online for examples of it. During the first little while my search rendered nothing so I decided to search for a line from the lyrics. I found the song, only it was "Wind the Bobbin Up", not "Wind the Bobby Knob"! Hahaha. Wow. Now I could have kept this on the DL and not embarrassed myself, but I wanted to share this excellent example of the very slight language barrier between Brits and Americans. When I say "bobbin" or "bobbin up" there is absolutely no hint of a Y sound, but obviously the person who taught me the song pronounced it that way. She must have been pronouncing the "in" a bit like the "een" in sheen. I think this must be particular only to a few northern accents because when I was looking for examples of the song, I came accross a few on youtube where they are clearly british, but there is no hint of a Y sound in their bobbin.

Sorry if this is boring for any of you, it's just that I find it all utterly fascinating. Especially how the British can pick apart an accent and tell where someone is from with what seems to me the slightest variance of the way something is said. Have I mentioned before that there is even a North Manchester accent and a South Manchester accent? It's like every twenty miles you travel in this country, there's a new accent.

Speaking of accents and slight language barriers. I figured out why people couldn't understand me sometimes. Before I thought it was because I was speaking too fast. But a few months ago I was talking to someone and they asked me to repeat myself four times! I realized that by the fourth time I was speaking very slowly and clearly, but they still couldn't understand me. Then I pronounced the T in the word I was saying and the light bulb went on. Since then, I have noticed that every time someone says "huh", it is because I didn't pronounce my T.

So I started making a little more effort to pronounce my T's. Then the other day, I called an automated system in the U.S. to take care of some financial business. It instructed me to say "representative" if I wanted to speak to a "representative". So I said it and the computer voice came on with "I'm sorry, I didn't understand that". I had to think for a moment, then I tried pronouncing it again, purposefully leaving out the first T, so it was "represenative" and it said "Okay, I'll transfer you". Geez, I can't seem to win on this one.

I used to think that it was only the really lazy rural accent that didn't pronounce their T's, but since I have been paying more attention, I have found that it is just the American Accent in general.

Speaking of the American accent (I know, will this post ever end? Soon, I promise) Being all of a sudden exposed to so many different accents within one small country has made me think about the accents in the US. This is not something I have thought of often, I don't think Americans ever really think much about their accents. America is just so big, and you have to go such a long way(in most cases) to encounter a noticeably different accent, we just talk like the people around us and never give it a second thought.

I've heard of Brits who have been offended by being pegged as Australian or vice versa. But to them I say; don't fret, most of us just simply can't tell. To us, the English, Australian, New Zealand and South African accent are all pretty much the same. If we were hearing the accents right next to each other then we would probably be able to discern differences, but otherwise, we just haven't been exposed to the accents enough to know the difference. On another note, for some reason we can tell the difference between those four and the Scottish/Irish accent, but we generally have difficulty telling the difference between the Scottish and Irish accent. Our ears have not been as finely tuned and frankly most probably don't think on it much.

But my living here has brought me to think of it often. My ear is developing. Slowly, but surely. I would love to compare the English, Australian, New Zealand and South African accents all side by side and see how I do now, but I still couldn't make any guarantees.

If you want to try your hand at picking out the American accent, check out the little quiz I found

Pictures

After a recent conversation with a friend I realized that it has been ages since I have posted pictures of us on here. The most recent pictures of us that I have available to put up on here are from our trip with Brent's parents.

This is in front of the Manchester Cathedral where Brent's Great, great....grandfather was married before immigrating to the U.S. Brent's mother had copies of his journal and read the entries involving his preparation and travels. It was a very interesting experience.


This, if you don't recognize it is Chatsworth aka Pemberly, Mr. Darcy's home of residence in the 2005 Pride & Prejudice.


In front of the Edinburgh Castle.


Different view of the castle.


On the main street in Chester.


In front of the Legacy Sculpture placed on the Albert Docks in Liverpool by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in memorial to all the immigrants who left from that very place.


There was a little construction going on, but here's a better view of the area.


On the top floor of the Wellington Inn (our favorite restaurant/pub here) singing Wind the Bobby Knob.


Just plain cute.