This is going to be fairly random, because it's just some things that I've learned/discovered about living in Bristol over the past couple weeks. There's no transition. Just think of it as a series of little informational blurbs.

So I managed to find regular lemonade. They call it "still lemonade" here, and I found it at the local health food store. It's pretty good.
Mary also managed to find Skippy brand peanut butter at one of the grocery stores, since she's been upset about the different taste, too. We looked at the ingredients, and the only difference between Skippy and the British brand was palm oil. Maybe that's it?

The bad things about grocery shopping around here is that everything is sold in much smaller quantities than I'm used to, and it's rare for anyone to shop for more than a couple days' worth of food at a time. It's nothing like home, where you only go twice a month, and stock up for two weeks in one go. Also, it's pretty much expected that you'll bring your own bag. This doesn't just apply to grocery stores. I was at an office supple store to pick up a planner, and they charged me 1 pence for a bag! (about 1.6 cents) Not every place charges for bags, but they do expect you to bag everything yourself, and that was definitely weird the first time I went grocery shopping. I had no idea I was supposed to be bagging my food as she rung it up, and ended up holding up the whole line. Oops.
It took me forever to find that planner, too, since I wanted a day-to-day planner, and all they had was week-by-week ones. Turns out that they call daily planners "diaries" instead for some reason.

Another odd thing I had to pay for was using a public bathroom. This was in London, and it was 50 pence (60-70 cents, I think). There was a turnstile at the front door of the restroom with a coin slot, which unlocked to let you in once you paid, and there was also an attendant nearby in case you tried to sneak in or something.

Magazines are much different here, in terms of what they're allowed to show. One of the girls on my floor bought Okay magazine (I don't know if we have that in the US or not, it's like People or something), and they had a side story about breast cancer and it's effects on the lives of specific women. All well and good. However, each of these women was shown completely topless, with nothing covering them up at all. Me and Darcy were a little shocked, but apparently lots of other countries don't have censorship laws as strict as ours.

I'm definitely learning more about the English language, living here. Australians, I have come to believe, make much better use of it than we do. Several of the people in my dorm are Australian, and all of them commonly use words like "offensive," "foul," "feral," and "brilliant." Only that last one is in any way positive, but it's still interesting to hear people using them.
Also, British people days "cheers" way more than I thought they would. Like, one of my professors gave me a handout for class, I said "thank you", and he said "cheers." I held open a door for someone, and they said "cheers." I bumped into someone on the street and apologized, and they said "cheers." When you end a conversation and start to leave, a lot of times they will say "cheers." Honestly, I have no idea what the words even means since they use it so much, and in so many different contexts. It throws me off every time.

In the Union building, which is right outside my window, there is some sort of dance group that meets several times a week, and they always practice with the windows wide open so I can see them. It's very distracting. Earlier this week they were learning the dance from "Thriller" and I laughed every time I looked up.

There's a fine film society on campus, which I am now a member of, that shows movies from all over the world once or twice a week. This past Tuesday they showed "Momento", which was really fun to see again. It's also fun to watch with someone for whom English is a second language, as if that film wasn't confusing enough on it's own without a language barrier.
However, I'm not sure how fine the films this society shows really are, since the other American movies they plan to show this term are "Rear Window" and "Fast Times and Ridgemont High." Maybe "Rear Window", but really? How can I accept that the French film they're showing is high quality when I know they've picked stuff like "Fast Times" from America?