Watch that English!

Another crazy thing about coming to England is all the strange words and phrases. My math teacher (they call it maths) says "Chop-chop, get along now!" if he thinks some of us are going too slow. I also heard some of my friends talking about large amounts of "quid", which was a slang word for pounds (as in money). My math teacher always talks about "getting those good marks" which meant "getting those questions right". Here is a list of American to British translations:

American ----------------------------------------------English

football -------------------------------------------------- American football
pants --------------------------------------------------- trousers
tape ----------------------------------------------------- sticking plaster
treadmill -------------------------------------------------running machine
game -----------------------------------------------------match
friend -----------------------------------------------------mate
underwear ------------------------------------------------pants
trunk -----------------------------------------------------boot
soccer ----------------------------------------------------football
thanks ----------------------------------------------------cheers
custom (like custom software)------------------------------bespoke

Cycle Heaven

When I first came to Cambridge, I was told that it was quite flat around. It isn't just quite flat, it is really flat. There are rumors that floating around my school that tell you that you could walk from Cambridge all the way to Ely, a town about 5 miles away, and the ground level would not change by more than 10 meters. And in Cambridge's case, it attract cyclists like the Eiffel tower attracts tourists! My father was visiting the Cambridge railway station once, and he was going to take a look around the area. So he looked for a place to lock his bike. He went around the back of the building and guess what he saw. There was a huge amount of bikes, literally a sea of bikes, all of them belonging to people who were taking the train somewhere. It was only about half the size of a soccer field, but there were more bikes in it than fans at your average soccer game. I can't even imagine what the number of bikes per person rate is in Cambridge. Or how anyone could find their bike in that bicycle parking lot, for that manner. Cambridge was built for bikes.

Is it football? Is it people trying to kill each other? No, it's rugby

Rugby is the sort of sport that if you watch it for the first time, you get completely and totally confused. It looks like, from off the pitch, a mass of buff people pushing and tackling and kicking and ripping the ball from each other, as you can see. But today, I had to play the crazy game for the first time.
I thought at first that it was strange tackling complete strangers, but after a while, you get used to being crushed by these huge jocks. It's really just a more sophisticated form of Kill the Carrier, unless, of course, the Carrier is on your team. Some parts of it involve ripping the ball from your teammates' hands. Some parts involve throwing the ball down the middle of the scrambling players and hoping your team gets it. It's not the most gentlemanly sport, but it is quite a lot of fun.

School

The first few days of school here have been great. There are a lot more subjects in my school (St. Faiths) than the one in the US. My favorite subjects are Latin and Religious Studies. The sports are great too, with rugby, hockey, netball and soccer (football). The teachers are very nice too. I would recommend St. Faiths as a possibility for schools in Cambridge.

The Moment of Truth

That special day had come where we came (Finally!) to England. We came into Heathrow Airport on Friday night at about 8:30 pm. We had hired a car to take us to Cambridge, so it took an extra hour and a half to get to our house. When we were almost there, we were wondering what the house would be like, and if Mom would still be awake. When we came inside, we greeted Mom with lots of hugs and kisses, and then we explored the house. It was much smaller than we all expected. My sister, Lydia, finally asked, "Is this the hotel or something?" I laughed at this, but I understood her thinking. It didn't seem like the house we were expecting at all. We shared walls with the neighbors, and it was quite narrow. It extends in the picture from the blue door to the white paint on the second level. We bike a lot, though, so we don't have to stay in too often.