You say tomato and I say tomahto

There are some things I have adapted to saying or pronouncing differently since we have been here. The other day at Tesco I asked hubby to grab a trolley without even giving it a second thought. Then stopped and said to him – “I just called that a trolley.” He just laughed and said –“yes you did”. The moms at school drop off always say – “ya’ll right?”, instead of “how are you?” and I have started to adapt to that as well. Some other things that come out without even thinking about them – brilliant, cheers, and straightaway. Now, why am I even bothering to try to fit in you ask? Well, some of it is happening naturally from just hearing this stuff for the last few months, but I also don’t want to be the ugly American that does not try to adapt to the new culture, so I do try to learn and conform a tiny little bit when possible. On the other hand, I don’t want to be the American who lived in England for awhile and comes back to the US pretending I am British either, so have no fear friends – I will drop these British-isms faster than we can unload our storage container – or I promise I will try to anyway. You can't say tomahto in the US without looking a tad bit crazy. However. There are two things that I just. can’t. say...with a straight face. Well...I can’t say them without feeling uncomfortable or awkward anyway. The first is asking for the toilets. To my American self – they are restrooms, or bathrooms or even the ladies room. They are not “toilets”. Period. Also, when I order a chicken fillet sandwich (as I did today for my lunch), I pronounce it as– fil-LAY. In England, they say fil-LET. That is just one of those things that I think is so awkward to say that I would rather try to say it my way first and then when I get the blank stare and the “huh?”, then I try to mumble fil-LET and hope they figure out what I want so that I don’t have to say it again. I have no idea why in bloody hell that seems so awkward to me, but it does. And I just realized one more thing – I apparently can’t pull off ‘bloody hell’ either – oh rubbish.