Beccy's British Bit

I haven’t had much time to type up another blog post or upload any photos of what I’ve been up to, so I thought I’d post up Beccy’s British Bit! I’m hoping that this will be a regular occurrence while I’m here, but I’m essentially going to write down all the small things I’ve learned from Beccy, my wonderful British flatmate, over the weeks.

So here’s Beccy:

And here’s the British Bit:

• Do NOT do the backwards peace sign (two fingers sticking up with the back of your hand facing a person). This is essentially the F*** You sign over here. Our other flatmate Francesca found out the reason: apparently the French would cut off the two fingers of Brits during wars so that they couldn’t do archery anymore - thus it developed into a way of I guess either pointing out “we’ve still got our fingers and we can kill you!” or “we’ve got YOUR fingers haha!” We haven’t exactly researched this so don’t take my word for it. But DO take Beccy’s word that you shouldn’t use this sign.
• “Wanker” is actually a pretty bad insult. From my perspective, I find it absolutely hilarious along with “Oh bollocks!” but both are actually curse words and you’ll probably get punched in the face if you call a guy a “wank-uh”.
• “Pants” does not mean pants like it does in America! It actually means underwear. What we call pants they call trousers. Also, suspenders here is what garters mean to us. So if you’re a guy and ask where you can find pants and suspenders, you’ll actually be asking for underwear and garter belts. awkward..
• BISCUITS ARE AMAZING. I think I mentioned this before, but the word biscuit is   essentially an all encompassing category of cookies and “savory biscuits” (like Rits crackers). Beccy and I often go on our trips to Iceland (a grocery store, not the country) and they sell almost all their biscuits there for 1£. This of course kills me because I want every biscuit possible. So far I’ve tried…

  Party Rings. Really thin sugar cookies covered in loads of frosting.
  

  Jaffa Cakes. Cakes with orange jelly covered in chocolate:
  
  andddd my all time favorite, JAMMIE DODGERS. Shortbread cookies with delicious jelly filling inside.
  

• When someone asks you “Are you alright?” it really is just them asking “How are you doing?” or “What’s up?” The first few times I heard it I replied, “Uh..yeah..I’m fine..why?”
  
• This one is debatable: Beccy claims that British people generally don’t buy cake mixes where you just add water and egg. They usually make their puddings (cake) from scratch! But then Madeline and I (I’ll blog about that later!) found this entire section of cake mixes at Sainsbury’s. I will admit though, they tend to cook things “for real” here a lot more. I’m so used to microwaving everything! Maybe we’re just really lazy in America hahah

Well, I think that’s about it for Beccy’s British Bit for now! More Beccyisms/Britisms later!