Sunday 18 September 2011

Our First Impressions

I will start the blog by apologizing to all of my English teachers, as you will see my writing style is a cross between rambling and poorly written, on my good days.  Hopefully you can follow along and enjoy my posts as we experience life as ex-pats.  Enjoy!

Our oversees adventure started on September 17, 2011 as I joined Lori in Derby (I keep wanting to spell it Darby as it is pronounced "Darby" but spelled "Derby").  We are here for a week to find housing and schools and iron out the other details of the move.  This weekend was spent looking around downtown Derby and venturing into the surrounding suburbs.  My thoughts below are my first impressions as this is my first time in Britian.

The first interesting thing I saw was on my ride from Manchester to Derby.  In the US they built overpasses for railroads that crossed roads.  In Britian they build overpasses for cattle to cross between pastures that roads bisected. 


View of downtown Derby from our hotel stairway.  Derby has a lot of stores and restaurants/pubs within walking distance.  Very convenient.


Lunch in the Westfield Mall.  Pasties were very good.  Lori had a steak, potato, onion and carrot. I had a chicken, bacon, potato, onion and chicken gravy.  The gravy was baked inside the pasty, very tasty.


Coral Reef fish eating my feet.  They are actually supposed to eat the dead skin off of your feet, still not sure if it works.  Not painful but more uncomfortable than tickling.  Obviously Lori's idea.


Lori feeding the fish.


Proof that Lori's second car trip didn't total the car.  She actually did good after almost getting into a head on accident.  Seriously.  I would have taken pictures but my hands were shaking to bad to hold a camera.  She actually did a good job.  The pic is of the rental car in front of the Frey's, an Indianapolis Rolls Royce couple that are here on their secondments (what Rolls calls the process of their employees working and living across the pond).


Looking down the street outside our hotel.  On the left is the White Horse Bar and Restaurant, today's lunch location.


My Dana Johnson meal pic.  We had a "carvery" lunch, a Sunday tradition according to the waitress/bartender.  Turkey and Beef carved off the breast/roast in front of you with roasted or mashed potato, brussel sprouts, carrots, cauliflower in a cheese sauce (not as good as Grandma's), stuffing and Yorkshire Pudding.  And a pint of John Smith's Extra Smooth to wash it down.  The Yorkshire Pudding is the bread bowl holding the stuffing ball. 

The "Pudding" is an example of US - British word differences.  Their pudding looks like bread to me.

Some other word differences - their lemonade is our Sprite.  Apparently they don't have lemonade here.  Their "Give Way" traffic signs are our "Yield" signs.  They drive on motorways and we drive on freeways.  They also don't use yellow lines to separate two way traffic which was what led to our almost head on collision.  They use white lines.  I'm still not sure how you know if a road is a one way or two way.


We didn't go in here but this is my kind of Happy Hour, 11 AM - 5 PM.  The Brits do like their pubs tho.


I found this funny.  It is like a betting store where you can bet on football games and watch the games you are betting on.  The store name "Ladbrokes" is what I find funny.

That's all for my first impressions.  Global mobility meeting, banks, houses and schools are next.

Jay

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