24 Days of British Culture: Day 8 - Weather and "Spring"

You can't talk about England and not talk about the weather.  

The Brits have lots of terms for raining.  Some are pretty standard:

Misty

Drizzle

Spitting

Spotting

Deluge

Some are a bit more English:

It's chucking it down

Tipping down

Plothering down

Raining stair rods
Pelting it down
Lashing it down

Any my favourite:

Really pissing it down

Although it rains 80% of the days, it is pretty mild.  So mild this year, that the Easter flowers bloomed in January this year:

24 Days of British Culture: Day 7 - Housing

This is very typical of English housing...

It also can be confusing that some homes have names, not numbers for the address.

However, instead of Zip codes, the UK uses "Postcodes" which are a combination of letters and numbers that get really precise.  Our postcode is CH3 5AR which gets you within 4 houses on our street.

24 Days of British Culture: Day 6 - Casinos

Day 6.  Brits can be heavy gamblers.  Mini-casinos like these are all over the UK.  Most of the betting is on sports - football (soccer) mostly, but it can be on rugby or cricket as well.  One thing you can't bet on - the weather.  Usually, it is 100% chance of rain anyways:)

Guess what...

We are packing our bags...

24 Days of British Culture: Day 5 - ATMs

Day 5.  Chester has more ATMs than I have ever seen.  It is not uncommon to see 3 in a row just like this across town.  Fortunately, most of them are free too!  No $1-2 surcharge here!

24 days of British Culture: Day 4 - Opening Hours

Day 4. Opening times for stores seem to be more of guidelines than anything...the convenience store at the end of our street claims to be open every day from 6am - 10pm.  On Christmas Eve, they actually were open from 6am-10pm.  Most days they are open from whenever they want.  Today they opened at 7:12am.

This place next door to it took down their opening times - the open and close whenever.  If the light's on, come on in.  If not, no biggie.

24 Days of British Culture: Day 3 - Fashion

Day 3. Here are my new English shoes from what might be the coolest shoe store in the world.  When you come in and are browsing around, you are offered a beer or glass of Scotch Whisky when shopping.  Cheers to that!

24 Days of British Culture: Day 2 - Hatchbacks

Day 2.  European cars are really small by American standards.  It is probably because fuel is $7-10/gallon.  Brits tend to be very pragmatic as well.  As a result, you'll notice that a huge percentages of all vehicles are hatchbacks.

See how many you can count in this video clip:

24 Days of British Culture: Day 1 - Can I Buy a Vowel?

It looks like our assignment in the UK is coming to a close.  As we start thinking about transitioning back to America, here are a few closing observations around British Culture.  Stop back for something new for the next 30 days.

Day 1. We live 5 miles from the border with Wales.  We've spent a fair amount of time in Wales since Jeryn's gymnastics club is near Wrexham.  The Welsh language is fascinating as we've mentioned before.  Vowels appear optional, and they pride themselves on having long ridiculous names of cities:

Along the way to Bangor, we stopped by Llanfairpwllgyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch just for a photo opp.  We learned that it means, "The church of the St. Mary in the hollow of white hazel trees near the rapid whirlpool by St. Tysilio's of the red cave".

We didn't see the whirlpool or church though.

Top 10 Pictures of 2015

Flickr is has an interesting algorithm which we haven't mastered.  It seems like what you name your photo is more relevant to the picture itself...Based on Flickr's algorithm, here are our top 10 most popular pictures from 2015 in order from 10 to 1...

Any way you cut it, we've had an amazing year.  We feel fortunate and grateful for the experience of a lifetime!

10.  "Normandy Beach" Normandy, France


9.  "Central Lille" Lille, France


8.  "Chapman's Peak Drive" Cape Town, South Africa


7.  "Lille France" Lille, France


6.  "Cape of Good Hope" Cape Point, South Africa


5.  "Table Mountain from Robben Island" Robben Island, South Africa


4.  "Kids in a Candy Shop" Mold, Wales, UK


3.  "Hiking the Lion's Head Trail" Lion's Head, South Africa


2.  "Typical Street in Montreuil" Montreuil, France

1.  "Longes Battery" Normandy, France