Student Bloggers

I'll start with pancakes. In Scotland, pancakes are a breakfast food. As far as pancake-eating conduct goes, that is the only thing we have in common. In Scotland, pancakes come in clear plastic packages in the dining hall. You grab a pancake, a pack of butter or jelly or Nutella, and a butter knife and take it to your seat. You then spread the butter or jelly or Nutella (most often Nutella) onto the pancake and eat it like toast. Room temperature jelly covered pancake. Sitting there spreading jelly, I can only describe the humor as feeling the same as slapping someone's face with a fish. It's a lighthearted, family-friendly type of humor that says “that's silly! That doesn't belong there!” It's the type of thing you can't help but laugh at. As I'm giggling with my pancake at morning breakfast, a European friend asks me why I'm laughing, and I have to explain that I think their pancake habits are funny.

Fun fact: the country of Finland has more saunas than cars.

Next up: pub quizzes. Pub (think bar/restaurant/mostly bar combination) quizzes are pretty much what they sound like. A pub has a night of the week that is typically slow, so they offer a weekly quiz with a sizeable cash prize (£100 usually) and the place gets packed, sometimes with over 50 people. I know of a place that has a weekly quiz on Sunday nights, and another place that has a weekly quiz on Mondays. So far, I’ve gone to a few general knowledge quizzes (I’m bad at those because I’m not British, I don’t know their culture as well), a Harry Potter quiz, and a Disney movie quiz (my friends and I did well enough on these two, but other people did better. There’s a lot of competition). These are especially fun ways to spend a weeknight if you prefer cheap-ish food and a (very) competitive contest with a few friends to sitting inside and watching a movie or doing homework. I try to go to as many of these as I can. I’ll win one, eventually.

The word posh is an expression that is common for Brits. I haven’t heard it before in America, except in movies. I had a general idea of what it meant before I came here. It means expensive-looking. It’s a word to describe high-class, gated community, uniformed private school type lifestyle. I’ve also heard people use it to describe South-England accents. It’s a deceptively useful word, and I like it. It has slipped into my vocabulary for future use.

Two nights ago, my friends and I played cards and taught each other card games from our different countries. I learned some new, fun games. I also learned that Spain has different suits for their card decks. Instead of hearts, spades, clubs, and diamonds, they have coins, cups, swords and sticks. A friend of mine pointed out that these are similar to tarot card suits. I love learning things like that about different places and cultures.