In 1970 my mother and I went to London, Edinburgh(sp?), and Paris for two weeks. It was the first time we'd ever been out of the country. Outside of our hotel we sat in the park and an old man came up and talked to us for 1/2 an hour. Although we didn't understand a word he said, we smiled and nodded, not wanting to be impolite.

I remember writing in my journal about the "oddities":

the light switches turned on by flipping them down (up here) the outlets had three round prongs (two slots here) underpass=subway subway=tube potato chips=potato crisps (chicken flavored among others) ham=gammon sausage=bangers French fries=chips (which are known in France as pomme frites=fried potatoes. BTW French toast misnomer too. Later trip: French friends wanted to know if Americans really ate marshmallows roasted like they'd seen in movies, had never heard of corn bread which I made for them, and were totally amazed to know that Donald Duck was speaking real words which I could understand)

We bought a box of Trifle, having heard of it and wanting to try it. We made it up according to the directions until it said to *put on the hundreds and thousands*. That gave us quite a laugh. Hundreds and thousands of what? We were stumped but finally found the little package of sprinkles at the bottom of the box

We ate pizza. They had such unusual things on it as ham, pineapple and chicken; now quite common place here too.

We totally enjoyed ourselves and found the people to be exceptionally friendly (something we didn't find in France. Of course it was August and only tourists and the French not able to go on vacation were there.)

Later in my life I travelled quite a bit and had fun trying to talk with people when neither of us could speak the others language. I learned to order food by looking at what other people were eating and choosing the same thing. Once when there were no other people in the restaurant (in Germany) I tried to tell the waitress what I wanted by making the (American) noise for chicken: cluck, cluck. She was totally baffled. I finally made the noise of a rooster: er-er-er-er-oooo (not cockadoodle doo). She pointed out *henne* on the menu as I laughed at my stupidity. I have since compared animal noises with various foreigners:

Dog American: bow wow, ruff ruff, arf arf Hebrew: hav hav French: ouaou ouaou (sp?) (pronounced wow, wow)

Bird American: chirp chirp, tweet tweet Hebrew: tseef tseef

Chicken: American: cluck cluck, rooster=cockadoodle doo French: (I forget how to spell it but it) sounds like pyew pyew Spanish: pio pio (pronounced pee oh pee oh. rooster=coo koo roo ku ku

Pig: oink oink Cow: moo moo Horse: neigh neigh (pronounced nay nay) Sheep: baa baa Duck: quack quack other languages?

I can't seem to find a couple of children's songs in Spanish that starts out: Los pollitos dicen pio, pio, pio. Quando tienen hambre, quando tienen frio. (The little chicks say peep, peep when they're hungry, when they're cold) And there's another song also in Spanish that talks about each animal on the farm and the sound they make. It may be Mi Chacara. Part of it goes Ven ***** mi chacara que es bonita. Los pollitos ven asi: pio pio pio. I learned these songs in elementary school. Perhaps some of you remember them (late 50's, early 60's). Will keep on looking.

I really also enjoy the etymology of words. Here are a couple of sites:

http://www.word-detective.com http://www.tiac.net/users/rlederer/index.htm http://homepage.interaccess.com/~wolinsky/word.htm

enjoy! judy