Culture shock

England has lots of weird things that we are not familiar with.  Not remembering which direction to look when crossing the street is a big one.  But there are little differences that I find strange.  For example; every outlet has an on/off switch.  So when you plug something in you have to remember to switch the outlet to the on position.  Everything in our flat has a switch on the wall that you have to flip before you turn on the actual thing you're using.

Voltage is higher here too so you have to check your device rating to make sure you don't fry it.  The good thing is most computers and electronics are rated for UK voltage so our computers are good and our flat has one 115 volt US style plug in the bathroom so we can use our Sonicare toothbrushes.

 One of the most absurd things we discovered is that you have to have a license to watch TV.  Even the freely broadcasted stuff over the air.  The BBC will come to your house and threaten you with fines if they even think you have a tv.  We discovered this because we opened a letter addressed to "legal occupant" which contained a notice with big red writing warning that an officer was going to be sent to our flat to investigate the possibility that we were watching TV.   And this license isn't cheap.  £145.50 that's $234.87!  It's like if PBS suddenly said "F*ck it!  We know you watch our sh!t without pledging you ungrateful bastard.  We're just going to come to your house and make you pay us."  And there's only four types of shows here; Reality TV, Game Shows, British History, and Top Gear.  Well there are actually 5, the news which could be considered reality I suppose.

We also discovered while shopping that no one knows how to use our credit cards.  Swiping a card through a credit machine is completely foreign to them.  They are much more advanced than we are in this regard.  Everyone here uses smart cards.  Credit cards with a chip embedded in it.  It is much more convenient because you just scan the chip and you're done.  No Swiping no signing. There were some places that wouldn't even take our cards.  So a suggestion to anyone who visits Europe, get a smart credit card; it is way easier than having to explain to everyone how to swipe.

They also have a thing here called post codes;  ours is LS2 7EJ.  Took me 3 days to remember that.  They need post codes for all kinds of things.  I went to buy a sim card for my phone and they wanted my post code.  We tried to get some money and they wanted our post code.  Sign up for utilities- post code.  And speaking of utilities, you can't set up utilities without a bank account and you can't set up a bank account without proof of residence from a utility bill.  Luckily the bank accepted the letter Cady's employer provided as proof after the 3rd attempt so we could open an account and start paying bills.  Only took us a week to get that settled.