language, heat and border lines

It is 3.51am and I'd like to sleep soon enough so I hope this post doesn't take too long. "Why didn't you just wait til morning," you ask. The answer is, I don't want to say no to creative output when it hits me. I give in because "later" takes the edge off. "Later" work is rarely as good.

Language
I'm very intimidated by what I hear. Anytime I walk up to a til or am getting off a bus or am put in some other non-negotiable human interaction situation, I consider how Canadian (but not Canadian - "American", "North American" or "not from here-ian") I sound and how much of a UK accent I can get away with. Not UK - English.
Last night I was thinking with an accent. : This reminds me of what it was like when I first moved to Montreal three years ago. Thinking in French is all fine and dandy but, given my limited fluency with the language, it make thinking EXTREMELY SLOW for me and that is not something I can stand for, no suh. So, at least I'm still thinking in English. Now it just belongs to the Queen.
Strangely enough, I do have the same language barrier in my head, however. I do think that when I talk to people they'll look down on me because I don't know how to speak the language.
que?

Heat
I discovered today that the radiators in this house are NOT a joke and NOT a tease and they DO actually work once you turn them on and you c'n feel it! Yes! I don't deal well with perpetual cold. Apparently my housemates do and they have turned off the heat but I feel better about the up-coming hiver.

Border Lines
Today, while watching some auditions for Britain's Got Talent (BGT) on YouTube, the idea of the United Kingdom - in the face of "STInt to Scotland" - was solidified for me.
Since I arrived I have been wondering, each time I hear an English accent, "Why not them?" (I haven't heard too many Irish, to be sure.) I have also been trying to read how these people of different nations feel about one another by the way they interact. Britain's Got Talent has contestants from four different countries (more from some than others, of course) but they act as though it's one nation and just different ...areas, or something. I know my understanding is shallow yet but I gotta start somewhere.
In the shops, I hear about 50% of the clerks being from England and the other half from Scotland. Most of the Scottish folk seem to be from the south end of the country and I don't think I've heard anyone yet who was unintelligible. Well, there was this one guy, who I actually met when I was here last year, who talks with such an intense dead pan (and he is actually funny, thankfully) and low tone and huge lack of interest in using his face muscles who I was a-struggling to understand but that's OK. At least knowing him meant I could say, What? and, Pardon? all I wanted.
What I wanted to get at, though, was that we're only here in THIS nation (we, the Canadian Power to Change interns) because they were the most understaffed from all the UK. Canada wanted to partner with the United Kingdom and asked them, "Where do you want us?" As it turns out, it's really not AS MUCH about the Scots as I thought. And this actually relieves me, to be frank. Let's be serious - on campus maybe 2/5 are Scottish, 3/10 English and 3/10 Irish. But you know what? That, again, is a shallow, year-old diagnosis so we'll give it time.
The point is that it's all of them and I'm glad. I listen to people and I watch them and I think THEM and US, very intensely. This will diminish as I stop being such a baby but what I mean is that I'm not distinguishing by nationality, not like I had to back home. "Back home"... some other Canuck really over-used that phrase tonight. I hope I don't end up that way.

4.08...not bad!