Lie back and think of England

Crazy Brits!!!

Lie back and think of England

Possible snow flurries!!

This is taken from today's newspaper

Downtown San Francisco may see its first snowfall in more than 30 years this week.

The National Weather Service says a weather system bearing down on the San Francisco Bay area is bringing cold temperatures and precipitation.

Showers are expected to begin on Thursday and continue through Friday, with a chance of showers on Saturday as well. Forecasters say the temperature in San Francisco Bay area will drop into the 30s on Friday and Saturday nights.

That likely means snow at higher elevations and could even bring snow to downtown San Francisco.

National Weather Service Meteorologist Austin Cross tells The Press Democrat of Santa Rosa it hasn't snowed in downtown San Francisco since 1976.

The Bay area has already seen snow on some of its mountain peaks after a storm last week.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/02/22/state/n074338S75.DTL#ixzz1EiZ73xNp

Its starting to feel a bit like England!!

Speaking the lingo

A few people have commented on facebook lately about how I am now using American words instead of English words. Ive been thinking about this today, and yes there are a few words I have started using. I think this is for a few reasons, the first reason being other than Dave, everyone I spend my time with is American and secondly I volunteer with children three times a week and find I have to 'speak American' or they don't understand me!! At first I tried to stick with my English words and re-educate people, that has worked with a few slang words ;) but not the majority.

Some words that spring to mind that I do now use are:

trash/garbage instead of rubbish

shopping cart instead of shopping trolley

fawcet instead of tap

trunk instead of boot

leash instead of lead

sneakers instead of trainer

gas instead of petrol

I also pronounce a few words different, but purely to get by when holding a conversation, however I refuse to pronounce aluminium and bouy the American way as they sound so wrong!!

Those are just a few that spring to mind, for those of you in England don't worry I still have a very very strong English accent that I imagine is going to take a long time to lose, if at all.

One interesting thing that I was told the other week was that after a friend had recently been to visit for two weeks from England, apparently whilst she was here and just after she left my English accent became a lot stronger.

Therefore the moral of the story is all my English friends need to come visit to help me maintain my Englishness - you owe it to your country :)

Wedding Invite

A few weeks ago I was in a store chatting to some guy, and he said 'You are from England aren't you?' - I thought - here we go again. I politely said yes and started to edge slowly away!! Then he said 'Are you going to the wedding?' I thought he must have me confused with someone else so I said no, and he asked 'Why? Did you not get an invite?'. I again replied no and moved away. I didn't think anything more of it, as I'm used to being asked random weird questions from complete strangers.

Then last week I was out walking my dog and another guy was chatting to me, and he also asked me if i was going to the wedding, I again replied no. It was only when I got home that I realized he was talking about the upcoming Royal Wedding, I guess people think as I'm from England I must know the Royal family personally. I got asked the same question again this evening (hence this blog post), at least this time I was able to answer no and actually know what I was talking about.

Maybe next time I should reply yes and tell him Kate is my BFF, and that my mum and her mum often do teas and cakes together.  I am shocked at the big interest in the wedding over here, the Americans seem quite excited about it.