Being an American in Durham can be confusing

As an American before I went to Durham I was really worried. To begin with, I was scared of how your money made me seem really poor or how President Bush’s decisions would make me a target.

Now, however, the only issue I seem to really face is: what are you all saying?

I thought it would be the accents that tripped me up, or the fact that during Freshers I threw around pounds like monopoly money because I didn’t understand it. But the real problem lies underneath all of your nice, clear English voices. They may be clear, but I am unable to understand a word of what you’re saying.

At the college bar when the topic turns to sports, Americans just have to give up. Football isn’t football, and rugby isn’t really football, and soccer is definitely not football. People throw around the names of the different players so casually.

They mention old rivalries between teams and places which I’ve never heard of. I can just about make sense of it if I don’t connect it to the World Series. Apparently “baseball is as boring as cricket” – whatever that means.

It gets worse. My friend went to meet her mum for “tea” at six-thirty. It was only later that I learned that the English really weren’t tea-crazy enough to skip dinner.

Speaking about a night out with your friends, drinking or clubbing, requires a whole new vocabulary. “He chundered all over my jumper last night,” any American would have no idea what a single word meant. Thank you Mrs. Weasley for at least teaching me what jumper means.

Or “Getting off with each other on the dance floor?” This would cause respectable Americans to recoil in horror. And “so mortal in Klute” is completely lost on me. Are the English normally immortal?

Yet the entire Atlantic seems to double in distance with two words: “cheeky” and “banter.” They’re the words that everyone seems to inherently understand but no one can clearly describe their meaning.

“I had a cheeky sandwich before dinner,” and the puzzling, one-word, “banter” comment that seems to be made in any situation. In my mind, cheeky is reserved for little boys who speak back to their parents and banter is how people in old novels tried to have fun.

Probably off the mark, but it gives me an image as I nod along and pretend I am perfectly adapting to an entirely new culture and English language. While, inside, I’m thinking fondly of how in my naïve, American world, English accents used to make me swoon.