Back for Now

Wow, I haven't posted for over a month! I guess school already has me in its evil clutches. I just fnished grading 60 (yes, sixty) exams, bah! So what else have I been doing with myself? Um discovering the joys and frustrations of webcamming with my sister and nieces. Watching the premieres for Heroes and The Office and taking lots of pictures! For my newest project I'm taking photos of all the cool old churches I can find in Salt Lake City. There are a lot of them, but it's so fun to discover them.

Oh also I went target shooting for the first time in my life. My roommate and her friend and I went out to the west desert and shot shotguns, rifles and pistols. I kind of felt a little redneck, but it's not like I was going out to the dump to shoot rats or something right? Anyway, along the way we went to Horseshoe springs and the water looked so nice we just jumped in fully clothed! Also we went to the ghost town of Iosepha. This place like an hour from SLC where the polynesian immigrants to Utah settled. All that is left now is a monument and a graveyard. Ok that is all for now. Over and out.

Summer Days Drifting Away...

So school starts tomorrow-blah! Where oh where has my carefree summer gone? It was a nice low key summer. I'm not really ready for deadlines and commitments, but oh well. Let's go ahead and do a recap of the summer-so if anyone asks, “what in the world did you spend you're time on” I'll have something to say. p.s. This is a work in progress.

Highlights:

Playing with my nieces

Visiting the Cotswolds and wandering through fields of Lavendar

All of the things I did for the first time this summer

Firsts:

Went to the San Rafael Swell.

Visited Northern Ireland

Drove in England on the wrong side of the road

Toured the Salt Lake Cemetery


Went to a play at the Cedar City Shakespearean Festival

Hit golf balls at the driving range

Swam in the Great Salt Lake

Went boating and swam in the Utah Lake

Became a Relief Society teacher

Festivals Visited:
Art City Days

Swedish Festival

Books read (ok not exactly classics, but very fun):
The Thursday Next Series: The Eyre Affair; Lost in a Good Book;
Well of Lost Plots; Something Rotten

Twilight

Reunions with friends I hadn’t seen for at least a year:
College friends Leslye, Andrew, Lia, and Jenn

Aunt Cherry and Uncle Dave

Holly, friend from Boston

Jackie, just back from her mission

Heather, Heather and Christy, friends from high school:

How I made money this summer:

Worked part-time at the University Library

How I whiled away my time:

Facebook, Email, Blogging

Taking thousands of photos

Playing the piano (mostly songs from the Jane Austen movies soundtracks)

Talking to my roommates

Sitting in my Party Pool

Watching the Olympics

Ward activities

Eating out

Working on Genealogy

New Friends made:

Lindsey, Emily, Holly, Jessi, Cristi

England, it's like a whole other country

Ang and Baby on Beacon Hill

I'm back! I just returned from visiting my sister in England and every time I go I learn new things about the way the Brits live over there. Sometimes I forget and think they are just like Americans, since no other country is probably more like us aside from Canada, but the truth is just because they speak English or at least a dialect of English, doesn't mean they do things the same way. And there will always be an endless debate as to who does and says things the "right" way.

Obviously we know they drive on the "wrong" or left side of the road. Last week I got to drive in England for the first time ever and I felt just like a teenager learning to drive for the first time. Not only do they drive on the left, the steering wheel is on the right side of the car and shift with your left hand (good for lefties, a little more difficult for the rest of us). I think I scared her because I kept hugging the curb (kerb in Englandese) and she thought I was going to hit it, but I thought it was better than hitting oncoming traffic. And the roads are so terribly narrow over there it just adds to the difficulty. But once I got the hang of driving, it was exhilarating. Although I don't think I went of 40 miles an hour.

So what else is different? Well they speak a different dialect than americans altogether, it's usually understandable, but sometimes you get a word throw in there that you don't know. Here's a little list of English to English translations.

the boot -trunk of a car

nappy- diaper

to let- for rent (like an apt)

for hire- to rent ( like a car or video)

on holiday- on vacation

torch- flashlight

footpath- sidewalk

chips- fat french fries with fish

crisps- potato chips

biscuits/digestives- cookies

rubbish bin- trash can

toilet- restroom (to an American this is a bit too descriptive, we like euphemisms like restroom or bathroom, but they just say it like it is 'which way to the toilet?')

aubergine-eggplant

to chuck something- to throw it away

lie in -sleep in

trousers-pants

girls underwear- knickers

pudding-any kind of dessert

Anyway, the list could go on and on. They also use different phrases than us. Instead of answering a question like 'Did you go to the store?' with 'I did' they would say, 'I did do.' In the region I was in they also say 'Hiya' a lot instead of just 'Hi'. They also spell things differently, besides little differences like colour and centre, they also have gaol (jail). My sister and her husband have pretty much adopted most of these saying and my little 3 year old niece pretty much has a Bristish accent.

Haha-the English way to say raised pedestrian crossing

And some things over there truly just aren't as good as American thing, take for instance plumbing. There sinks have two faucets, one for hot and one for cold. You can see how this could make it hard for washing your hands, face, contacts, etc. Also the service in restaurants and other places is not as good as in the states. Oh and everything costs twice as much for an American since the dollar to pound rate is two to one. Yikes.

But what do they do better? For one thing Chocolate. Hands down I like Cadbury's chocolate better than any other chocolate anywhere. On my last visit I got to go to Cadbury's World! Ah delicious. Also public transportation is really good and they are better at being environmentally friendly. They've also got the beautiful quaint little village thing down.

Mostly the things I miss when I'm away from England are foods-Yorkshire pudding (it's like a savory puff pastry covered in gravy, so so good), Sticky toffee pudding (this is actualy a sweet cake with dates and caramel in cake served with cream, very rich), Hob Nobs (chocolate covered digestive cookies), new potatoes, parsnips and scones. yes you can get some of these things over here, but they are just better there.

All in all it's fun to visit my ancestral land and I love finding the little differences, it's refreshing really. So although technically it is a different country it's really kind of like a second home.

Fare thee well...

For those of you that don't know, I depart for Dublin tomorrow morning! That's Dublin, Ireland, I'm jumping the pond and then hopping over to England to stay with my Sister and family. It should be fun, we have lots of plans. We are going to have a Red Neck 4th of July BBQ and we are going to photograph her tiny village in England and then we are all flying back to Dublin right before I leave and driving around Ireland for four days.



I'm excited to see my nieces, I'm excited to see the Northern half of Ireland this time ( I went in '03) and I'm excited to get away for a vacation for a little while. Not that my summer has been too taxing or anything, but sometimes it's just nice to have a change of scenery. So wish me luck, the only thing I'm not looking forward to is 24 hours of traveling tomorrow, yuck. I hate airports and planes. But I guess they are necessary evils. To entertain me I have bought the 2nd in the Twilight series and the second in the Thursday Next series.



If you haven't heard of Thursday Next she's a character in a series of books by Jasper Fforde. There are really charming and fun, not like really any genre you've read-almost sci fi/fantasy/ mystery but not, with a little romance and a lot of humor and literary illusions thrown in. The first in the series is The Eyre Affair.

Ok so that's what's going on with my life lately. So I may not be blogging much, we'll see. Ciao!

Getting Back to My Roots

I am 1/4 Swedish, I am more Swedish than I am any other nationality and I'm very proud of it. So this Saturday I participated in a holiday of my forefathers and foremothers-Midsummers. Midsummers is a celebration held at the Summer solstice, the longest day of the year. There is music and dancing and food. You wear flowers in your hair and there is also a Midsummers' pole which you dance around. I was never raised with any Swedish traditions so it was fun to go to this festival and learn something about my heritage and feel at least a little Swedish. Here are some pics.

There were a lot of darling little girls dressed up in Swedish garb with floral wreaths, so sweet.

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I made this flower wreath myself with Birch twigs and Scabiosa, Valerian and Coreopsis Flowers.

I Want Answers

So today I discovered a really fun place on the internet. A place to go to get answers to just about any topic you can think of. I wanted to know what kind of food my sister in England and I could serve at her 4th of July party that was really really American, so I asked the millions of people online and in minutes I got many answers, ranging from apple pie to 3 Musketeers to fried okra. So what is this site called? It's simply Yahoo! answers (http://answers.yahoo.com). If you already have a yahoo account you're set, if not it's free to sign up.

Then I started to answer questions. It's fun and what a great idea to share knowledge. I mean two heads are better than one and millions are better than one too! It's really fun so give it a try, whatever you wanted to know the world is your oyster!

The Big Parade

Saturday was the big parade in my Hometown and it made me feel a little nostalgic for my childhood. I took my camera and tried to capture some of the fun, hope you can feel that same excitement as you look at the pictures. The kids were also loving all the candy people were throwing from the floats.