Hitching a Ride Downtown

This post was originally published in "The Anxious Traveler"  on May 24, 2008.

In August 2004, I boarded a London-bound 747 to start the adventure of a lifetime. I was moving to my beloved England to teach for a year. I knew it would be a grand experience in many ways.

While in England, I learned to live with less choice in the grocery store (the cereal aisles in American supermarkets can still scare me), no car, great public transportation...and I learned to speak a whole new type of English.

I found that most Brits very much like Americans--whatever they think of our government, they find we Americans to be amusing in many ways. Never was this more evident than in how my colleagues reacted to my accent and my "Americanisms."

One day after school, I needed to run to the co-op (our local grocery store) for a few items. My landlady, Kathy, had offered me a ride, as it was raining out and walking didn't sound like fun. She, however, had to stay to get some work done, when I was ready to leave. I mentioned this in passing to another colleague, Carol, and she said, "Oh, I'm going to Tesco's...you can ride with me."

I found Kathy in the main office and innocently told her, "Kathy, I'm going to hitch a ride downtown with Carol."

Our Head Teacher, David, was standing nearby, and he started shaking with laughter. Little did I know, but I had just used the most American of English I possibly could have. I doubt any Brit has ever referred to getting a ride from someone as "hitching a ride," (it's "getting a lift"), and the concept of a downtown is even more foreign. In a small town like Burnham-on-Crouch, "downtown" is "the High Street."

Hearing David's laughter (and the laughter of pretty much everyone else in the room), reminded me that I was still very much American in my ways, no matter how much of England's ways I had adopted.

Realizing that these English colleagues knew exactly what I meant--but had probably never heard it put in quite such a way--struck my as so funny, and yet, so baffling. I grew up surrounded by American English, so there is nothing weird to me about hitching a ride, or going downtown.

Just goes to show that just because they speak English...doesn't mean they speak YOUR English.