The list

 Bella is compiling a list. Actually she is writing two lists. One list is the words that are used in the U.S that are different from New Zealand and the other list is things in the U.S that are different from back in New Zealand. And the lists are growing!


Bella has noticed that all the houses here have basements, the fire hydrants are red and stick out of the ground and the cars drive on the other side of the road! When we visited the supermarket, or grocery store, Bella was looking for toilet paper and thought it was very funny when she found out it is called bathroom tissue! So two more words were added to her list.


There are words that we use in everyday conversation that people here have never even heard of. Caro called Sari cheeky the other day and a friend asked what the word meant. Well... it means kind of mischievous and rascally she said and the friend replied she might use the word for effect. Steve overheard a waitress in a diner calling her colleague onery and having never heard the word before he asked her what it meant. She said it meant being cranky. Researching it a bit further the word ornery [awr-nuh-ree] comes from American English and became a shortened form of the word ordinary in the early 1800s and meant commonplace, of poor quality then by 1860 the word had evolved to mean rude and cantankerous - so there you go and try not to be ornery today!!

"All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. It's the way they're raised."

-Mark Twain