Preparing to look like a complete idiot...

Yesterday, I got curious about how the cost of food in England compares to what we pay here, so I decided to do a little research on the internet. What I discovered is that my American education has set me up for utter failure in daily life abroad. I've decided that I should start accepting the fact that I will likely embarrass myself routinely once we move to England.

Let me explain where this realization came from. As I began searching for information on the cost of living in England, I came across the following table:

Item	Cost (pounds £)
Carrots (1kg)	0.71
Sausages (1kg)	3.67
bananas (1kg)	0.93
Milk (4 pints)	1.11
Apple Juice (1 litre)	0.73
Bread (800g loaf)	0.96
Eggs (carton of 6)	0.99
Sugar (1Kg)	0.99
Butter Spread (250g)	0.84
Raspberry Jam (454g)	0.70

It's exactly what I was looking for, unfortunately, I have no idea what 1 Kg of carrots or 800 g of bread looks like. Should I know the English equivalents to these?...probably. Do I?...no! And therein lies the problem. What happens when I go to the deli and try to order a half pound of lunch meat? Will they know what I'm talking about? I'll probably have to resort to using my hands to try to demonstrate the volume of meat I want. This will inevitably fuel European's suspicions that we Americans aren't very bright. I'll go ahead and apologize now for the damage that I'm sure to do to our reputation abroad.

To add insult to injury, I did some more exploring on the website from which this table came and discovered (much to my dismay) that the entire site was created and is maintained by children at a British junior high school. Super...I'm going to come across as less intelligent than a 12 year-old. Maybe nobody will notice if I walk around with a hand held calculator and a bunch of conversion factors written on my hand.

My one saving grace is that the value of the dollar has depreciated so significantly in England that the exchange rate is now 2 dollars for every British pound. I can handle that conversion!