"Are you alright?"

Fifteen to twenty crew members ask me this with concern in their voices every morning as I run around trying to get things prepared for my boss's arrival. The first couple days I always answered with a martyr'd sounding, "Yeah, no, I'm good, thanks..." and wondered exactly how awful and freaked out I must have looked to have THAT MANY people concerned about me.

I'm not sure how it clicked, but somewhere I realized their heartfelt "Are you alright?" is the English version of my "Hey, howyadoin'?" Oh, yeah- there's English and then there's English English. I felt like a jackass for letting my drama queen answer for the first few days. Now I toss it right back:

"Hello, Bianca, are you alright?" "Hey, yeah, howyadoin'?"

Our 2nd AD is doing his best to train me away from a lifetime of American English. The trash can is a bin, my trunk is my boot, and its not WATER, its WAH-UH. I'm not very good at it. But I have adopted the long, cute British phone goodbye.

Rather than the usual, Thanks-Bye-Hang-up, I notice calls end as follows with both participants speaking in a higher and higher pitch until its kinda singy:
"Ya, alright, thanks, cheers, bye, buh-bye!" And its a call-and-response, too, so you can really get into a few rounds of the "bye, bye" section. Adorable. I can't help myself.

Furthering my transformation away from American Girl, I've pretty well mastered Right-side driving. I don't hesitate with crossing lanes to turn right, I've figured out the rhyme and reason to roundabouts (hint: KNOW where you're going and PAY ATTENTION to what lane you need to be in) and I'm now comfortable running over someone's lawn to pass. The roads are narrow- usually too narrow for two cars to pass comfortably, so both cars drive half on the grass, gutter, or embankment on either side to make it. I'm excellent at this.

I found myself so good at Right-side driving, I got relaxed enough to re-adopt some of my awful American driving habits like working while I drive- UNTIL exactly 30 seconds into writing a reminder to myself on a piece of paper when I drove onto the curb of the highway. The curb was too high for me to drive off lest I pop my tire, so I stayed on the curb/sidewalk until it disappeared for a second and I was able to steer my car back fully onto the road- and realized I had popped my tire anyway. See sheepish in the dictionary? That's me.

(What's funny is all three driving Americans had an incident of some sort on the same day. Two flat tires and a busted side-view mirror. The crew definitely had a laugh about that.)

Sun sets over The White Lion Hotel, our Thanksgiving hosts

Uncle Sam says "Eat your turkey!"

 This week was Thanksgiving ("It's a big deal to you people, isn't it?" said my 2nd AD). Being NOT in America, we had a full day's work but afterward found a restaurant in nearby Aldeburgh (the ONLY restaurant) serving a Traditional Thanksgiving Turkey dinner. The appetizer choices were hot wings or mozzarella sticks- clearly American (?), if not traditional fare. We didn't care, we went straight for the turkey (amazing), green beans (actually yummy) and sweet potato mash (oh yeah) topped with pretzels (...what?).

Happy Thanksgiving!

Pretzels, my new Tgiving tradition

                          The restaurant was bleeding red, white and blue wrapped in Forth of July decorations and we couldn't get enough. It was really very sweet- Yay, America!

Our shooting schedule has us working 6-day weeks so when you consider I worked all last weekend, this has literally registered as the longest week of my life.  I'm starting to go kind of bats. The hotel I'm in has no gym and I'm working from before dawn until well after its dark. On the suggestion of one of my set friends, I decided to try running at night after I got home. I was so restless, I was open to anything...

So it's black as pitch here at night. No streetlights. None. I knew this and decided to run anyway thinking my eyes would get used to the dark. They don't- it's THAT DARK. Thank God for my flashlight app (yeah, I'm in love with my stupid iPhone, shut up.), its the only thing that kept me from breaking my ankle on the uneven roads. Also, I don't know my way around my neighborhood- I haven't had the chance to explore anything yet- so my plan was to keep the curb on my left and I would retrace my steps... instead, I found our neighborhood pub (ANOTHER place I haven't had time to explore) and realized I just jogged a 10 min circle. I chalked the experience up to "super stupid" and made fun of myself for doing it. Until-

Cheshire Cat watches over my run.

I did it again. Hotel life is either lonely as hell or you're in the hotel bar every night. Having spent every night in the hotel bar to this point, I decided to try again. This time I was armed with a working knowledge of which street I would take and I had Rihanna's new album to keep me company. And it was pretty fantastic.

There is really NO ONE around and it is REALLY DARK so if you want to dance down the street or pretend you're running away from a hideous maniac in the dark or sing at the top of your lungs with the wind blowing your hair around like you're starring in your own music video you totally can.

I know because I did.

This was the scene as I left my hotel for my run tonight. I actually had a bit of dusk to light my way the first few minutes.

This pic has nothing to do with this post other than its what I woke up to this morning and ITS SO DAMN PRETTY!!!