I loved shopping and most importantly, I loved having my own money.
While living in Nottingham, a city in northeastern England, I used to go on adventures to downtown Nottingham all the time to check out all the stores and see what they have on offer. I received a weekly allowance which I used mainly to buy cute accessories and eat jacket potato. If you don't know, jacket potato is this exquisite dish invented by the Brits, I mean I don't know if they were the originators of this idea but I discovered it through them. Basically, it is a baked potato, split open, and filled with some yummy toppings like cheese and as the case for England, beans.
.jpeg)
So anyway, I saw a job posting in my school for a newspaper girl, or guy, but it's a girl in my case and I was curious about this opportunity. I was considered way too young to get a regular part time job but since this was advertised in my school, they accepted people my age so I inquired about it. Shortly after, huge stacks of newspapers came to my house along with a huge phosphorous side bag for carrying. Normally, this job is done by people who have bicycles but I didn't have a bicycle so I had to carry the newspapers on my shoulder. It was gruelling to say the least but I was up for the challenge.
They gave me a map with the area I was responsible for managing. I don't think I need to explain the duties of the job to you which include leaving a newspaper at the doorstep of each house or in their mail box.
My job was on the weekends so it didn't disrupt my school schedule but it did cut into my homework time and that was okay since I was very efficient at management. I was able to manage my school work, playing for the soccer team, and having a job on the weekends.
Every weekend, I would spend a few hours a day distributing newspapers. Some days were uneventful and others I would get surprised by the kindness of strangers like the one time one older British lady took an interest in me and invited me into her house for tea. She was so curious that a small Iraqi girl decided to take on this job since usually it's British boys who did this duty.
British people were quite interesting. My observations during school was that British teenagers were quite wild, many girls getting pregnant at a young age, drinking early, and overall not being such good students like me. Some of my classmates used to even called me "A keener". I remember on one occassion this "Rude Girl" as they were called tried bullying me because I was mispronouncing some words. My English still wasn't perfect at that time. If you know me then you know what went down. She asked me if I want to get beat so I told her let's meet outside after class and let's see who's gonna beat who. After class she walked out and never dared to bully me again.
On another occasion, I remember there was a school dance and it was my first time attending something like this but one boy made a very strange comment. He told me I looked like a nun. I was so confused by this comment. I was dressed perfectly normal for a teenager attending a casual school dance: jeans and a top, but apparently that was too covered up for British standards. Weird.
Some things in school were quite traditional also. For example, girls were required to take a dance class while the boys took rugby lessons. That was the first time I ever heard about Rugby but at that time, it didn't peak my interests too much, I got the impression that it was a sport suited mostly for boys. My dance class was interesting though. We used to learn different choreographed dances to different songs, the one I remember vividly was "Vogue" by Kylie Minogue.
Being so busy kept me from getting into any real trouble at school and in general, I was always a good kid. I kept myself busy with my school work and my job. Although my job didn't last too long. After about 2 months, I decided to quit. The amount of newspapers that were getting delivered to the house was overwhelming and my shoulders started to ache madly from carrying the load around so I quit. I had a lot of fun with little bit of money I made, mostly shopping. HEHE.
I only spent a short amount of time living in Nottingham but it was such a cute little adventure, I will never forget it. When I first arrived in Nottingham, I didn't know much about the city or England in general but I knew it was the land of Harry Potter so I was ecstatic to be there and while I was there, the 5th HP book got released where there was this big mystery about who was going to die, the first HP character to get killed. During that time, I also had a major crush on David Beckham and even had a giant poster of him above my bed. I also liked Avril Lavigne and entered into this magazine competition and won a cool autobiography book about her.
So all in all, I would say that Nottingham was a splendid experience. Pip pip cheerio, mate!
#NewspaperGirl #Nottingham #ChildhoodMemories #GrowingUp #MyFirstJob #BritishMemories #Nostalgia #ChildhoodAdventures #TeenageMemories #HarryPotter #DavidBeckham #AvrilLavigne #KylieMinogue #SchoolDays #BritishCulture #TravelMemories #LittleSura #ComingOfAge #LifeStories #PersonalBlog
