"You Alright?"

So keeping with the basics, one of the first things that I had to get used to was the differences in greetings. I assumed that the standard greetings were "Hi, How are you?" (and no not in the choppy almost evil Mazungo African greeting type way that my fellow African travelers could relate to) or "How are you doing today?"

So when I meet my first set of true British natives, I was greeted with "You alright?" or "Are you alright there?" With the tone and rhythm of these simple words, I thought "geezz, I know I am jet lagged and probably sleep deprived but do I look that bad". I then began to wonder if I had something on my face or perhaps I over or under did my make up... had my eyeliner gone astray or even worse did I have a booger on my face????

So very rapidly and quizzical I would be reply "yah" or "I'm fine; thanks for asking" and wonder why are you asking while often secretly wiping my face (just to make sure there was not anything gross on my face).

It was not until I meet one of my British classmates and she said the same thing but this timel I asked why she asked. Was it because I looked sick or something? She laughed and replied that was the standard greeting almost equivalent to the American "Wassup". With a sigh of relief, I smiled and had to laugh at myself. Here people where being nice and giving me a standard greeting while I thought they were sincerely concerned about my health or trying to let me know I had something wrong going on with my face.

After speaking with one of my North American classmates and now great friend, I found out she had the same conundrum. Oh how silly we were to think that just because we spoke the same language it was the same all around!