19 December 2007

greetings from London!

Well, we're here and having a great time thus far... and I even managed to knit a hat with my Malabrigo on the plane and am halfway through a matching scarf! (you'll hvae to wait for pics until I get back to Canada, unfortunately... but it is lovely, lovely stuff!)

I have to say, though, that it's very disorienting being in a place where we all speak the same language but everything is different. I nearly got myself killed crossing the street yesterday because I looked the wrong way for the traffic, for example!! This, I hadn't expected. I also have to keep reminding myself to times the prices by two and add a bit... at first everything seemed so cheap - until I remember that one pound = two plus dollars!

(I shall have to remember this essential fact, for example, if I trip across a LYS and snap up all the Rowan ASC in the place because it only costs £7!!!! as opposed to 'it only costs $7'! I trust hat J will remind me of thisact of vacation life...but then agin J has never seen me in a LYS and this sight in itself could well destory the relationship!)

In reality the only cheap thing here is the alcohol - it costs about the same here as in places in the US I have been, meaning half what it costs back home. If I had to live here, I don't think I'd ever stop drinking!

And, funnily enough, the computer keyboard is different! Only slightly, but for exmple I had a big problem finding the @ sign... and there are no double quotation marks. So, any typos in this post are to be blamed on the keyboard rather than on the fact that I am enjoying my fourth cheap pint of the day.

(On this topic... they label the beer cans here with anti-drinking information. For example, the can of beer in front is me, which is 440ml and 4.0% alcohol, advises me that it constitutes 1.8 UK alcohol units and, moreover, that 'responsible drinkers' do not exceed 3 daily alcohol units (for women -four for men). By my calculation, this is one and a half cans of said beer. I don't think that Canadian beer drinking units could ever be this stingy... especially given that the normal alcohol content for Canadian beer is 5% and 4.5% is about as light as it gets.

And what would be the point of drinking 1/2 can of beer anyway??

I'll stop boring you all now... hope you're all keeping warm and storm free...

Kristina