Lessons Learned

Things I Learned This Year:

Italian hotel hair dryers are weird. 

How to drive standard (learned the hard way, by lying to the car hire agency in saying that I was an old pro, then praying to god I didn't stall on the way out of the parking lot. I pulled it off -- with a few minor glitches)

When someone lets you drive their car and the first thing you ask is which pedal is the clutch, it generally does not evoke a good reaction

'Nought' is, in fact, a number and can be used in sentences as such.

I rock at the game of cows.

Incidentally, there are a lot of cows in Ireland. And horses that look like cows.

I am unable to carry a clutch as a purse. Such actions will result in me doing something effing stupid like leaving in the bathroom of a three-story packed bar in Dublin on St Patrick's Day. Money and passport-carrying devices must have a strap that I wear on my person at all times.

Canadians must be incredibly resilient to handle snowfalls of an inch or more on a regular basis and still be able to function.

Although a bar fridge (North American term for what British people just call a 'fridge) seems small, you can actually fit about three times as much food in it as you thought was humanly possible. That's the inevitable conclusion when four people share a fridge of that size.

A tumble dryer is not a necessity. Nor is working TV. However, Coronation Street is but it can be listened to on a broken TV.

Hot water, however, is an absolute must. We were forced to survive without it for a mere 12 hours and did you know how many pots you have to boil to fill a bath tub? The correct answer is all the pots you have in your house time eleven. For what is essentially a sponge bath. Fucking eh.

In England, pants and trousers are two different things.

Frozen yorkshire puddings that are ready in the time it takes you to boil water for tea just might be the best thing ever.