The little things.. you know. Funny things, strange things, weird things.
Firstly my mail is working, yay! I've already got loads mail.. though all of them are from my new bank Lloyds TBS. And guess what! They sent me a cheque book. Yes, I can carry it around and write cheques when ever I need. In reality I don't have the faintest idea how it works, but I got one now!
Welcome to the modern age of cheque books!
Unfortunately this is only in Finnish, but I have to put it here.. cause it's so true. It's a piece of stand-up called "England is developing country".
The taps are miles away from each other. And you can only have your hands burning or freezing when you wash them. How nice.
In public toilets the doors of the cubicles open only inside. Most of the times you have to wiggle yourself in a cubicle and try to avoid having to stand on the toilet seat to get the door closed. I don't even want to know how people bigger than me do it. The flushing of most the toilets is still mystery to me, cause usually I try to do it but nothing happens (in our flat we have quite normal "push that button" system - thank god!). And in 98% of public toilets there isn't hand drying paper, only air blowers. And no automatic taps. That would involve too much modern techniques.
Showers. You have two options: no water pressure at all or water pressure so high it almost rips your skin off your bones. In our flat we have the later. I'm still afraid of the shower. But at least we get the shampoo off our hairs. The flat next door don't have water pressure at all. So we're the lucky ones.
Queuing. Everywhere. All the time. What ever the occasion is, there's no reason why we shouldn't queue to get there. In best cases we have queued to get to the queue.
We were lucky ones - only 2,5 hours of queuing in total!
Trying to get the laundry dry after washing them. Still have no clue how to do it without using the dryer. My room has pretty subtropical atmosphere for two days when I'm doing my laundry. But at least my room is still warm. I might survive through the winter. Single glassed windows. Heating time twice a day. Leaking house. A prober winter with several days temperature bellow zero. What more do you need for hypothermia?
Funny german airer, but really handy! (Thanks Denise!)
My windows during laundry day + day after + on mornings after rainy nights
The traffic on the weird side of the street. And the weird street crossings. The dangerous crossing is the best example: nobody knows how it should be crossed. But there's more places like that. No zebra paintings on the ground. No traffic lights for pedestrians. No nothing. Only thing you can do is try to read vehicles traffic lights and try to read drivers' minds. And hope that you have quick feet or that the cars' have good brakes.
The odd focus points of being more environmentally friendly. Attempts to reduce the use of plastic bags and bottled water. Umm, here's a though: how bout recycling wastes? Wastes are divided to general waste and recycled waste. And then there's glasses. In recycled waste one put plastics, tins, cardboards, cans etc. In general waste you put all the rest. Like biowastes, papers, fabrics.
Dressing. Or more like the way girls dress. Or don't dress. Like the guy said in the orientation session in Jyväskylä I've never seen so much cleavage and bare legs in my life during these two weeks. Skirts (if a person has one) are so short they don't even cover their arses. Bras are regarded as a piece of clothing. But if one is wearing a lace dress there's no need for bras. And the shoes have to have at least 12 cm heels. It's no excuse to not to walk on heels if you don't know how to walk on heels. And jackets? What are those? It's totally okey to go and get back from the bar/pub wearing just a short dress, nothing else.
Two lovely ladies in a very typical british clothing
But hey, it's an island! What did you expect?!
