I found Wal-Mart

Well, although I am in one of the largest cities in the world with a million and one things to do on a Friday night, I did not do anything exciting today after work. I went to ASDA, which is the Wal-Mart of the UK. The one I went to was very close to Wembley Stadium and pretty convenient on my way home.

I only picked up some mugs and a tall kitchen trash bin- but that was enough since I had to carry it on the tube. The trash bin wasn't heavy-- just awkward, as the box was about 3 feet tall (holds 13 litres, but I don't know what the US equivalent is). At least I wasn't the only one with a large box on the tube; some guy had what looked like to be a flat screen TV.

I felt very much at home, since this was the biggest discount store I've been in here. I guess it's just nice to know that if I want to pick from a larger selection of something like hand soap, there is a place to go nearby. The coolest thing there was the escalators: they aren't stairs, they're sort of like a conveyor belt which allows you to take your "trolley" (shopping cart) upstairs!

Elizabeth-Anne and I have needed a trash bin, so I wanted to get have one before she came home from Dallas tomorrow. But after I got home from that shopping trip, I had to leave again to go to Tesco, another of the small groceries nearby, to get some food. So after that, I was too tired for much else. I guess I have many more Friday nights ahead of me for more "glamorous" nights out.

Oh, and I need to make 2 "corrections" on something I said in my last post. First, I stated that as a speech and language therapist, I use the English Phonetic Alphabet, but for some reason I was thinking about that today and remembered from undergrad that it's not the English Phonetic Alphabet, it's the International Phonetic Alphabet. Second, I also realized today that I had said the difference was mainly vowel sounds when comparing British English and American English, but a conversation at work today made me think of other differences. One of the speech and language therapists I work with, who is from Boston, started talking about teaching the /t/ sound in the middle of words to younger students. This made her realize how in American English we usually say a /d/ sound for words like "butter", "motto", "lighting" instead of a /t/, whereas in British English they usually say a crisp /t/ or a glottal stop, which is too difficult to describe here. She was having to teach the child how he was used to hearing it. Not that anyone cares, but I wanted to change that :)