Sometimes it still feels like I’m abroad

It does sometimes feel like that, even after 16 months. I can’t explain it (okay, I will give it a try….)

Sometimes I have a ‘moment’ and go to myself ‘ooh, look at this around me, it’s all different and not my “home”, and it feels so very much like I am in another country (yes, yes, I know I am!), but this is also where I live. Weird.’

See, told you I can’t explain it.

What happened was, I was driving along looking at the snow on the sides of the road and for a moment I caught myself, and realised that the scenery and landscape looked just like the America I used to see on the news and on the TV, and very much how I had always imagined it to look after it had been snowing.

To be honest, my actual stream of consciousness went like this:

‘Ooh, all that snow….this looks America in The Wire….funny that, I remember watching The Wire before I came out here and seeing the snow in a few episodes, and thinking, blimey George, that looks cold – I shouldn’t want to live there. Ha, ha!’

Baltimore in the snow

Sometimes, just sometimes, I totally HAM up the British accent

Yes, I do! Does it get me anywhere? Nope!

I find very often that when I am speaking to new people on the phone, or even in person, I have to repeat the first thing that I say since the British accent takes them by surprise.

Today, trying to get a dentist’s appointment, that happened (even though I suspect most people who phone the dentist start with the sentence ‘Hello, I’d like to make an appointment please…’!).

Despite having to repeat that, from then on in I hammed up the British accent so I that sounded all la-dee-dah and plummy, and added in some ‘awfullys’ and ‘terriblys’ and ‘thanks ever sos’ in the hope that she would find me sooooo lovely and British that she would be able to fit me in for an appointment (because ‘me [frig*ing] teeth’ are killing me – no, don’t worry, I’m not blaming high fructose corn syrup 😉 ). But it was not to be.

Anyhow, in all my discomfort, it made me think of this great British ditty (that which we Brit kids all grew up on!). FYI, I did/do look after my teeth, I just cracked one on an almond earlier today! Sigh.