Bits & Bobs #1 (ft. smells, quotes, and a hare)

“But a hare, now, that is a different thing altogether. A hare is not a pet but a person. Hares are clever and brave and loving, and they have fairy blood in them. It’s a grand thing to have a hare for a friend.” --The Little White Horse

Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off - and they are nearly always doing it. --The Secret Garden

Hello m'lovelies! You don't get the stories of my last weekend's adventures today, because there are a few more books I need to read before I share that (it'll make sense eventually, I promise) but that's actually kind of perfect because I had quite a bit of backlog of random things (anecdotes, observations, &c) that I wanted to share, none of which were long enough for a post of their own. Including quotes, because could I really deprive you of quotes for a whole semester, even if I'm not doing monthly wrap-ups? Of course not. I hope you enjoy!  

One of the funny things I've noticed about How People Here Do Things is that when they're walking with their dogs in a park, the dogs are off-leash 90% of the time. Not in tiny parks, but in, say, Endcliffe Park, which is, end-to-end, probably a mile and a half? There are just dogs running around everywhere, and they're super well-trained and can be called with a word, which I find super impressive. And they all get along; either people just don't keep dogs that don't get along with other dogs, or they train their dogs specifically to get along with other dogs. It's kind of fun to watch, but definitely a culture shock. 

***

Something that shocked me when I first got here--and contributed to the disorientation of my first few days--is that everything smells different. You'd expect that city streets would smell the same everywhere--but they don't. After being here for nearly a month, I've gotten used to this and don't notice it barely at all anymore, but for the first week, I kept noticing how the cityscape smelled totally different than the US, how the people smelled different (different detergents and such) and how even the open areas smelled different. (Although I will say that horse poop smells similar the world around.) And that is weirdly unsettling. Even the things that I totally expected to smell the same--like cigarettes and people smoking marijuana, typical city activities unfortunately--don't. Cigarette smoke smells more bitter, and marijuana, if this is even possible, more skunky and musky. 

There are two things, though, that do smell exactly the same...Subway, when you walk past it (I guess Subway sandwiches smell the same everywhere) and that Ariana Grande perfume, which I was shocked made it across the pond. To my nose, it's a quintessential 'sorority girl' perfume...it smells (to me) like people wearing tube tops, mini skirts, and having too much to drink. So, the first time I smelled it on someone here, it was quite a jolt, but *shrugs*. I guess it's made it here too. Even though they don't have sororities. (This is, of course, not meant to be of any offense to anyone reading this who may happen to wear said perfume. It's just the association I have with it.)

***

One thing I was semi-expecting but also not is how different the ecology is here. I have plans to write a separate post about trees (because I am a NERD but also the opportunity to talk about the song "Oak & Ash & Thorn" is too good to pass up) but something that's been delighting me has been the different bird species. Why didn't anyone ever tell me that British magpies are actually gorgeous? They're white and blue and iridescent, and I kind of love them. Also, the kind of birds we'd call chickadees in the US they call 'tits' here, which causes indecent amounts of amusement when we have to discuss them in ecology class. (To be fair: talking about the 'Lesser Tit' is rather giggle-inducing, I must admit.) I've also seen a Real English Robin a couple of times since being here (shades of The Secret Garden) and that always makes me smile. One that caught me entirely by surprise was the different types of seagulls--they have similar seagulls here as we have at home, but they also have smaller ones that tend to hang out with the mallards in ponds and which have very different cries than 'normal' seagulls. It always makes me think of that line in one of the Narnia books: "and the cry of the seagulls! Have you heard it? Do you remember?" 

***

Tea is delicious. I like tea. I especially like British tea--Yorkshire Tea, brewed for only a couple of minutes, with sugar and milk. It's funny, actually; Father M stocks Yorkshire Tea in his office for Night Office, so I was used to drinking it but always thought it was super bitter...I'd only let it steep for like thirty seconds so I could drink it. Turns out the reason it's bitter like that is that it's meant to be drunk with milk and sugar. (Duh, Sam. Duh.) Anyway, I was delighted to find that Yorkshire Tea is actually from Yorkshire and have been much enjoying feeding my tea habit--not only do I drink it when at the Catholic centre here, but I also will just make it for myself to have with lunch and dinner. It's fantastic. Also, because I got used to drinking it at Night Office, the caffeine in it doesn't bother me at all when going to bed, so I can astonish the Brits by drinking a mug of it right before bedtime and sleeping like a baby. (Apparently there's a huge rivalry between Yorkshire Tea and PG Tips, but according to Fr. M, Yorkshire Tea is the more Catholic option (whatever that means), and I figure while in Yorkshire...)

***

Eomer: "You've vinced me! How dare you!"

My Australian roommate: "You guys have a serious flag problem." 

One of my groupmates: "Ignore the box."
One of my other groupmates: "We always think outside it already anyway."

One of my groupmates: "Is that a uterus, or are we good?"

Tutor: "I think the prize used to be 250 pounds and some wine, but I think now it's just 250 pounds and you buy your own wine."

A professor: "Our job as landscape architects is to tell ecologists 'boring!'"

The same professor: "The nature preserve just needs a little bit of...love."

Tutor: "We just had the health & safety people walk through the classroom going 'we're not looking, we're not looking!'"

A professor: "There's also an exhibit in the disabled toilet."

Tutor: "What is it we landscape architects have that architects don't?"
Classmate: "A sense of humour."
Another classmate: "A sense of humanity."

Father L: "The sign of the Covenant with Abraham was circumcision. Many people preferred the rainbow."

***

I texted my mom right after I went on my first grocery run "look, I made the refrigerator look like a Benedict lives here"! Which I totally did. Now that I'm cooking for myself, it keeps making me laugh how much my childhood upbringing vis a vis food has shaped my adult attitudes towards food--in a really good way! But shaped nonetheless. Lunch is whatever-the-heck-you-find-in-the-fridge-preferably-leftovers-because-we're-definitely-not-eating-those-for-dinner. Never throw away a chicken carcass. A snack is a fruit or a veggie. Make a big batch of whatever and just eat it all week. I cannot possibly cook less than a pound of ground beef at a time. Nor less than a package of pasta at once. I saw my roommate the other day cook like 1/4 of a package of pasta, and about had a conniption. I grew up with four siblings, and we routinely cooked--and ate--two pounds of ground beef at dinner. One is as far as I'm willing to compromise, and thus, as of this writing (on Tuesday of the week I'm posting this) I have only just finished eating all the animal protein I bought within two days of my arrival. Yes, it's been three weeks since then. And yes, I kept it in the freezer. 
Anyway. My two proudest kitchen moments to date (besides making the fridge look like my family's fridge at home) were a) figuring out that if one takes baked potatoes and covers them with extra bolognese sauce and then adds the typical baked potato toppings (cheese, sour cream, green onion) on top, one has something that seems much greater than the sum of its parts, and b) taking the last of the leftover chicken, the leftover noodles from the whole box I cooked, and several other ingredients, all of which I had around, and making chicken noodle soup from scratch without a recipe. And it was delicious. (I'm kind of tempted to do a food post at some point. If people are interested, lemme know.)

***

Speaking of food, apparently Brits don't eat sour cream on baked potatoes? (Or "jacket potatoes", as I've learned to call them.) I got talked into cooking for Cathsoc, which means making dinner for 25-30 people, and I was slightly freaking out until one of my siblings suggested "just make baked potatoes!" Which was a brilliant idea, and dead simple...just potatoes and topics, cook the bacon, chop the green onions, put other things in bowls for people to scoop, and then bake the potatoes. Everyone serves themselves; it's great. Father L from the Catholic centre was going through the line to serve himself, and asked me "Is that sour cream?" and I was like "...yes?" and he was like "for the jacket potatoes?" and I was like "...yes?" So he took some to try, and came back 20 minutes later and was Waxing Eloquent about how "sour cream is fantastic on jacket potatoes! the way it makes the bacon and things stick! and it's changed the way I think about jacket potatoes forever!" Which I found Most Amusing. 

***

One of the things that has been making me laugh lately is how I've needed to modify how I introduce myself. Because of the way vowels are different from the US to the UK, when I introduce myself the way I usually would, the /a/ in the first syllable of my name (e.g. Sam...this will be funny to people who know me in real life, but the explanation still 100% works) often gets misheard, so people thing I'm saying "Sem" or something along those lines. Very confusing. Because that /a/ vowel the way I pronounce it is a bit nasalized and a bit between an /a/ and an /e/. More on the /a/ side obviously, but not quite. So I've been needing to be very intentional when someone asks my name to say "Sahm", with a floaty /a/ vowel on the first syllable. I was introducing myself to someone the other day, and without thinking said my name the way I would at home, which earned me a confused look. I correct myself to "Sahm", to which, without missing a beat, he replied, "Well now, there's the Queen's English!" 
Indeed. 

***

I realized recently that the Sunday Mass I attend at the Catholic centre on campus lines up exactly with the Sunday Mass at my home parish that my family goes to, because of the time change. Which I think is really cool. The timelessness and transcendence of the Mass and all that...it's neat to be going at the same time but in very different places. Also, the evening daily Mass I go to some days is at very nearly the same time as the midday Mass at Newman that a lot of my friends go to. And with both of those things, I love meditating about being joined to my family/friends in the Eucharist in a really special way since we're all receiving at the same time. 

***

I was out on a Sunday morning walk in the fields adjacent to Sheffield (you can walk straight out of the city via Endcliffe Park, which I will never stop finding charming) and I was following a ridge in a pasture to see if there was more footpath that way, when I saw this absolutely huge thing that was moving like a rabbit, and it took me a minute to realize that what I was seeing was a hare. And then I got absurdly excited because hares are such a Very British thing in my head (we only have snowshoe hares in the US, and none where I live as far as I know) and it reminded me of The Little White Horse.

***

The other day in class, one of my group project groupmates pulled a squashy package out of his backpack and proffered me a hot cross bun, something I'd never had because in the US, they often have eggs in them. (I'm allergic. Our family makes Hot Cross Scones, which are also delicious, for Good Friday.) But apparently not in the UK, and I enjoyed my first ever hot cross bun very much! (It was all cinnamon-y and yeast-y and raisin-y. 10/10.) 

***

So, funny story...since getting to England, I have been very intentionally familiarizing myself with the traffic patterns here. Like, so I don't get run over. I haven't gotten run over yet, so I've been at least moderately successful, I think. But I realized the other day that I have actually been very successful at getting used to the traffic patterns here. Because I was watching Runaway Bride (when I'm watching things by myself, I prefer 1990s and 2000s romcoms. Laugh at me all you want, but I like them) and if you've ever seen it, you know there's a fair bit of driving in it. Well, the first driving scene, the car starts off down the road, and my gut response was "HE'S ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD". No, he was on the right side of the road. Also, the correct side of the road. Both the right and the correct side of the road. So, I laughed at myself, and then another hour into the movie I DID IT AGAIN. Successful familiarization of myself with English traffic patterns, I guess. It'll be fun trying to drive when I get home. 

So! How are you? Which was your favourite of these bits & bobs? Have you ever seen a hare? Eaten a hot cross bun?