lazy sunday

After a long week and a really tiring day yesterday I've decided that I'm just going to have a lazy sunday just so I can relax a bit and take some time to edit through my fellowship manuscript.

Yesterday I took a trip out to Weston-super-mare for the day and pretty much just walked around the town until I was too tired to walk anymore. It's a little seaside resort type town and lucky for me I arrived on the day of a clown festival, so there were litterally hundreds of clowns walking all over the city doing tricks and other things for kids of all ages. It was quite an experience... it's a nice place, very campy in that everywhere you turn all along the water there is cotton candy, arcade and amusement games and all sorts of stuff like that.

There is a big pier called Grand Pier which is basically a mini indoor amusement park that sits out on a long dock. When I got there it was high tide, but in about half an hour's time the tide went out so far and so quickly that by the time I got back from the end of the pier, which had once been standing over water it was now standing over sand. I posted some photos on my photo page, so have a look. I've never been to a place with such a drastic tide change, by the end of the day I could barely make out where the water started because the tide was so far out that it just sort of blended in with the sand.


I've found that lately I have been enamoured with learning british words and comitting them to my vocabulary... I'm finding it really interesting how we speak the same language and yet there are so many differences which make it difficult for a Canadian and British person to have a conversation. There are lots of obvious differences to get used to like having hot and water run from two different faucets in each sink instead of one that creates warm water, or everytime I plug something in I realize that I've forgotten to turn the adjacent switch on so that there is actually power getting to the item I am using... but I'm finding the language difference particularily fascinating because I'm constantly learning new words and expressions every day.

I've starting making a list on my computer at work, and I thought I'd post a few of my favorites...

see if you can guess what these are

corgettes
aubergines
sugar paper
nappy
naught
pants
rocket
garden
yard
a naturist

and my most favorite - mangetout




and here are the answers

corgette - zuchinni
aubergine - eggplant
sugar paper - construction paper
nappy - diaper
naught - zero
pants - underwear (trousers are our pants)
rocket - arugula
garden - any area with at least grass growing in it
yard - more like a patio (nothing growing) ie. if you called someone's grassy lawn a yard if would be a offensive, because it's considered a garden and a lot nicer than a yard.
a naturist - a nudist

and finally - mangetout means snow peas (I'm assuming named so because unlike other peas you eat the pod as well)

anyway that's just a taste of the many words i've been learning, but I thought it might be fun to make you guess to give you an idea of how often confused I am when people use words thatoften even in context ("I've got to pick up some mangetout for a stirfry") they are difficult to work out.

that's all for now, don't forget to check out the photos

- Chris