I'll Take an Accent to Go With That Soup...

I've been meaning to post this idea for the last couple days, but haven't really found the time, what with everything going on. I'm staying with my sister and brother-in-law for the weekend, taking advantage of the time to visit and say good-bye to my college friends. I'll probably give a better recap after the weekend has ended. For now, I'll just write about a topic that has amused me for the last couple of days, as I've battled with cabin fever and boredom.

I guess you could say that it's somewhat of a tradition for my twin sister and I, in the days and weeks following Christmas, to watch all of the movies that we received over the holidays. By some odd coincidence, most of the movies we got this year were either set in England or produced by a British filmmaker. Whether Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, or V for Vendetta, I've become so familiar with the sound of a British accent that I have to concentrate in order to distinguish whether a person has one or not. By the same familiarity, I can usually tell when an accent is feigned. Is that weird? British movies and books have been favorites for a while, and I'm banking on the hope that this familiarity will help me when I'm abroad.

It's one of my grandmother's favorite movies. I think I've already mentioned that I want to genuinely pick up an accent while I'm in England. After watching so many movies, though, I doubt that it's going to be possible. I mean, I can already mimic an accent, but applying it to everyday speech naturally would probably take much longer than the five months I'll have.

I'm watching The Mummy on TV right now and in this case, the mixture of American and British voices are quite definite because of the direct comparison between the two. This particular movie is one that my grandma likes a lot, and it was during one of our "movie days" that she first introduced it to me.

I'll go for an impromptu subject change right now. I think it was sometime last week that Jenn and I went over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house for a "lunch day" with Grandma and one of her good friends, Tish. Grandma provided sandwiches and Jenn and I tried out a creamy carrot soup recipe that, we found, needed a lot of work in the "creamy" part. Before and after lunch, we spent a lot of time talking about our upcoming experience and what to expect. In her youth, Tish studied in France for a bit and traveled around Europe, so you could say that she was a wealth of cultural information and experience. She's also a true character, and many of her stories kept us laughing through the afternoon.

It won't be long now. Through boredom and whatever small events I can find to plan to fill up the next week and a half, I'll be flying to England before I know it...and definitely before I can believe it.