The next day at work I had a lot of fun talking about American/English differences. Dave had lots of questions for me and I had been making observations this week and last. They try out their "American accents" with me which is pretty entertaining. Angela Haynes put a bag of Hershey's Kisses on my desk to help me feel at home. When people from here visit the US (mainly NY) they bring back American candy (Hershey's, Reese's, Oreo "biscuits") because they're less expensive. They couldn't get over that I only have Cadbury on Easter because it's everywhere in England.
As far as differences go...they say "half 12" to meant 12:30, but how do you know it's not 11:30? Till is cash register, guff is fart. Plastic paddies are what they call Irish posers. They use "cheers" after pretty much everything and they use "jolly good" and "mate" which I thought was more of an Australian thing. They can't get over the portion sizes we have in the US which is understandable. If they want to have a "lay-in" that means they want to sleep in in the morning. Not totally sure of the difference between biscuits and cookies, but biscuits seem to be more formal, yet they referred to Oreo's as biscuits (I guess because they have a filling...not sure).
They had no idea what I was talking about when I said rain boots because they call them Welly's (short for Wellington's). Pants are trousers. Jumpers are...sweaters? Or maybe sweatshirts? As for weight they use the term "stone" which I think is equivalent to 14 pounds - a little confusing.
I noticed that the office drinks a ton of tea (coffee too, but mostly tea). I think there were about 20 different kinds of tea in the back room, but I found some hot chocolate hiding (Cadbury, not Swiss Miss). One of the major differences I can't seem to understand is that they say "zed" instead of "z" - how did that come about? Every time I'd try to say that something didn't make sense they'd say "well, it's our language". Touche! Cookson didn't seem too interested in recycling, but I won't generalize to all of England.
Dave and Marc from work invited me to go rock climbing with them later on at Mile End Climbing Gym (right next to QM campus). I'd never done it before besides in gym class, but I had wanted to try out the climbing wall seeing that it's right there. They told me to bring my "mates" so I invited Alycia and we walked over at around seven. They looked pretty surprised to see us. I definitely could've gone to bed, but figured it'd be good to do something different and meet new people.
The place was so big I couldn't get over it! There were so many people there it was like an entire rock climbing community. I finally found where all the hot guys in London hide out. Earthy/dirty guys galore - love it! Anywho, after renting shoes and a locker to store our stuff we had to get a tour because we were first-timers. The oh-so-cute climber stressed how this is a dangerous sport where you could get seriously injured or die - as if I wasn't nervous enough already. There were so many different rooms (luckily some beginner rooms as well). There were mats all around that we were reminded couldn't prevent injury or death because they're pretty thin.
Some rooms had ropes to practice belaying, but the majority of the wall were ropeless. I couldn't believe it - how do they get away with that?! Luckily for us we had personal helpers/instructors (Marc and Dave) so I felt a little better about the whole experience. We warmed up on some of the beginner walls and used chalk from their chalk bags for my excessively sweaty hands. We moved on to some of the bigger stuff (still beginner though) and I quickly remembered my fear of heights as I made the mistake of looking behind my shoulder when I was halfway up the wall. One of the first climbs I finally got up the wall and then I had to hoist myself over it so that I could climb down a very narrow ladder on the other side (I'm not too fond of ladders either). I was pretty scared so Dave climbed the rope next to me and got to the top so I wouldn't be looking down at the ground. It surprisingly worked and I was very grateful because I was just picturing slipping off and seriously hurting myself. Doing that made me feel accomplished yet each time I did it I had minor heart attacks.
Alycia was fearless - I guess she'd done it once before at home and loved it. It was pretty impressive, but she might've gotten a little ahead of herself. She climbed up one of the big walls fine, but when it came to coming down she was stuck. Such a scary feeling. We were trying to coach her down, but it wasn't really happening. She ended up jumping down, but didn't really land on her feet. So then she overreacted and was saying that she broke her ankle (like the time in the kitchen when she cut her finger on a can and said that she was going to die).
It was fun watching Dave and Marc as well as the other experienced climbers - they're like monkeys climbing so effortlessly and without fear. I was extremely impressed. Definitely something different to do, but without ropes I don't think I need to do it again any time soon.
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