Sooo I didn’t update again quite as soon as I had wished, but better late than never! So last I wrote a little bit about University of Nottingham and campus and the likes. For anyone who’s interested, I’ll post a bunch more pictures of campus in my Nottingham Facebook album soon so you can look for those.
For now, I’ll try to talk a little bit about Nottingham city centre. It’s easy to get around on foot—the city as a whole isn’t necessarily, because my campus is about a 10 minute ride to city centre, but once you’re in the real city-ish part of the city, you can walk most anywhere. I wouldn’t say I know my way around, per say, but every time I go, I pass all the same shops and bars and clubs I’m used to going to, so I think it’d be hard to get truly lost.
The city centre more or less revolves around Old Market Square, which is just a giant plaza with a fountain and people sitting on benches and whatnot. From there, it’s about a 5 minute walk to Victoria Centre, a.k.a. the mall, and only about a 2 minute walk to one of my favorite places ever, Primark, or ‘Primarni’ (as in Armani) as my friend overheard some British girls say (it’s like how Americans sometimes call Target ‘Tar-jay’ pretty much). Primark is a pretty stylish place with remarkable bargains. I got two tank tops, a skirt, a sweater, a blouse, and two dresses for 24 pounds, or $35-40 (Mom was proud). PS, the skirt and the blouse were each one pound, which is practically impossible anywhere, let alone in England where I feel like they jack the price up on umm yeah, everything.
A word of caution to Primark shoppers: never, EVER go on Saturday. It’s like Black Friday in New York City times a million. Seriously, I felt claustrophobic and got zero shopping done what with clothes flying around and all that jazz, nope, no thank you. I had to go back on a Wednesday.
I won’t make this a terribly long entry because I don’t have too much to say. I’ve almost fully recovered from this persistent cold, and this weekend I’m 90% sure I’m going to Birmingham on a Rag Raid. I know you’re like “What?” and that’s the point; I’ll explain Rag Raids in my next blog (just to keep you guys hanging).
One last thing: I’ve decided to (try to) do this new thing every post where I list one thing I am well-adjusted to in England and one thing I still can’t get the hang of. Who knows if I’ll keep this up, but I thought it might be cool. So:
In England, I have adjusted well to: looking right instead of left before I cross the street (I was pretty good about this from the beginning, which I was proud of).
I have had much more trouble adjusting to: greetings. Here, everyone says “You all right?” or “You ok?” instead of “How are you?” or “What’s up” and it throws me off every time, because I feel like I must look sad or something (initially, I thought this really was the case until everyone said it and I was like ‘Okay, I can’t possibly look sad all the time’ and figured out it’s just a common greeting). I am still unsure of the proper response, mostly I just say “Yeah, you?” which is pretty lame. I don’t feel confidently English enough to use the expression myself, so I never learn the natural response. I’m working on it though.
3 Comments
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
hahaha please keep up the last part. I love reading your blog, obviously because I obsessively comment on all of your posts!
Katie, Understand about the looking right part, same deal in Singapore. At first, I had to think to move to my left when walking/running with someone approaching, now it’s strange because I naturally move to my left then second guess myself. Oh well . . .
You really were good at looking left instead of right from the beginning. I would just look both ways… just to be safe.
And then you’d laugh at me.