My Flatmates.

Charlotte, Charlie, Charles, Lady Char Char, Carlotta...

This is a picture of Charlotte Amy Faragher, the girl who I am caring for. She's 19 and loves getting dressed up and looking cute. She's upbeat, constantly laughing and just great to be around. She does get stressed about school though but really, she has a lot more to worry about with classes and such than most people... like even being able to get TO the classroom in her wheelchair. She is quiet but very clever.

Pili and her boyfriend in Colombia.

My Columbian flatmate who also helps Charlotte is named Andrea Pilar Aristizabal, but she goes by "Pili." She's 19 (almost 20) and teaches belly dancing and meditation in Columbia while studying politics at her University. She is great to be around because she is always dancing and singing and is always over-the-top enthusiastic. She seems to be very intelligent and she is definitely very friendly (she hugged me when we met) but has a hard time expressing herself because English is her second language. If you say anything to her in Spanish (Buenos dias) she is beside herself with happiness.

In fact, her and I went to the bank the other day and she heard two men speaking in Spanish, so I eventually convinced her to go talk to them and when we left she literally had tears of joy running down her cheeks. She asked me to help her improve her English so I have been correcting her a little bit and she is thrilled when I do. I taught her the word "hangover" yesterday and she thought it was hilarious. She also used to say "I'm going to take breakfast," instead of "have breakfast," as well as saying "I have hunger," instead of "I'm hungry." I've only known her a few days but I think her English is already improving some.

My German flatmate/volunteer-mate is named Annika Rehman. I don't have a picture of her because she doesn't have a Facebook (shame!) but I'll have one soon since I'm sure we'll take pictures while we're here sometime or another. Annika is very German. She is tall and blonde, very straight-forward, and quite reserved. She is also very nice though. She plays football (soccer) and is on a club team here at Uni. She also plays the electric guitar so we talk a lot about music but she doesn't listen to any Beatles except "Come Together," and doesn't know any Led Zeppelin except "Stairway to Heaven." SO, I told her I was going to make her a CD when I get a chance. Every once in a while she'll accidentally slip a German word in to our conversation without even realizing it... I usually realize what happened but Pili gets very confused.

I have also met a few of Charlotte's friends from last year, mainly Leah and Josie. They're both pretty hilarious and hopefully I see them around more often. I haven't had bad culture shock but I've mostly found the cultural differences very funny. For example, Charlotte's mom, Fiona, and I went to the British-version of Wal-Mart which is called "ASDA." The first thing I noticed was that the shopping carts they used didn't just go back and forth but they went every which way. People were walking with their carts completely sideways... it was so weird. Also, there is a whole isle full of hard alcohol in ASDA! I was so shocked to see it. Fiona told me that they sell it really cheap there so kids go and buy tons of it because the price is so low. ALSO, a big pain that I have come across is that none of my plug-ins fit into the UK plug-ins... so I had to buy an adaptor. When I buy things in a store I feel like a little kid because I'm still unsure about how to use pounds. They have pence instead of cents, and their one-pound is a coin and not a bill. I feel like I sold all my money to the bank for Monopoly money.

I've found British food to be quite good so far. They call desserts "pudding" and they often refer to dinnertime as "tea" or "teatime." That reminds me, I've been drinking tons of tea. That is one stereotype that is completely true. Last night for tea we had chicken and gravy pie and salad. For lunch I thought it was funny that we all had the same ingredients available to use but we all made something different: I made a turkey and cheese sandwich, Pili took two pieces of bread with tuna and put mayonnaise on it while she ate it, and Annika ate two pieces of bread and butter with cheese on them. I got the hiccups after dinner and Annika said "Bless you," which I thought was pretty funny.

Some of the common phrases I've come across are, instead of saying 7:30 or half past seven, many English people just say "half seven." Also instead of saying "how are you," a lot of people just say "alright?" and if something is very cool it's "well good," and if someone is very attractive, they're "well fit." Instead of "crazy" or "insane," people are "mad" or "mental." Once, when Annika and I were discussing the difference in their accent and mine, Leah overhead us and said "You're taking the piss out of my accent!? Cheeky buggers!" I liked that quite a lot.

Well that's all for now, it's about time for me to go make a cheese and tomato quiche so until next time...