Your Local Foreigners

We discuss our immigrant identities through language and we wonder whether we put on a slightly different personality when we speak a particular language? Who do we become when we speak English and how different is it from who we are as native speakers? Has English changed our native tongue, too? We analyse tones, intonations and expressions and ask ourselves if we land as ever - neither here nor there or maybe precisely in that migrant, fluid space: in between. 

Yep, it's been some time BUT thanks for being patient and for sticking around.You've all heard everything about COVID-19 by now but we thought it's impossible not to offer our foreign perspective of the evens. Particularly because we ended up...in two different countries - SEPARATED - whilst Ania is being an immigrant on temporary immigration in Poland. So we are proudly reporting to you our subjective, incomplete and biased experience of what life is like during the pandemic in our dearest countries: Poland and the UK. In other exciting news, you can now also WATCH our conversation for the first time! For the video recording, head to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjDjEXwQ93ZoaH_vBX7jfAA?view_as=subscriber

London is not just a city. Well, it's a capital, a cultural mecca and, frankly speaking, it's a lifestyle. But we also think it's almost like a country in itself. So we've decided to take a stroll through the streets of the UK's capital and take you to our favourite places, tell you about some embarrassing London cliches we've committed and share everything we both hate and love about this town. Put your jogging shoes on and bring your Oyster - it'll be a proper tour. Enjoy ;)  

In this episode, we dive into the many eccentricities of a British household. We tell stories of how we've survived hot and cold taps, beige wallpapers and rugs on carpets. We've got locked out and trapped inside, unable to find keys for windows. It's certainly been an adventure. Join us on the tour of a British house through a foreign lens! 

In today’s episode we go back home to Wales. We take a very nostalgic, love trip to all the things we appreciate and miss about Wales and the Welsh people and we tell you why Cymru (wink, wink) is just about as awesome as a country gets. *Episode best listened to with a Welsh cake in hand.

We venture out into the confusing way of British holidays, the mystery of bank holidays being bank, celebrating burning Catholics to death and no party for St. George. We find solace in our favourite PANCAKE DAY. What’s the British holiday that you don’t get? Or maybe there’s one you’d love all of us to celebrate? Drop us a line! We’d love to hear your thoughts. We’ve done a bit of calendar reshuffling our end, too.

What happens when you take two immigrants, one of them immune to jokes, and ask them to analyse British humour? EVERYTHING! Starting from Benny Hill and Monty Python, through dad jokes, banter and stand up comedy, all the way to cards against humanity and long, uncomfortable silences... Our conclusions: Brits are funny, don’t play with beavers and never, under no circumstances, try to explain a bad joke to a foreigner. Listen to the end to be in with chance of winning a unique prize (that's what she said).

Before we moved to the UK, we didn't give queuing a single thought. Now, however, we could write an academic paper on it and this episode is a semi-professional, technical look at the "art of queuing". It's also a homage to the UK, for showing us that queuing doesn't have to be stressful and that, in fact, you can breeze your way through queues and probably make a few friends along the way too.

Christmas is finally here! As we are totally sold on British Chrimbo, we dive into the odd and puzzling world of crackers (which are not savoury snacks), mince pies that have noting to do with meat and pantomimes which have no element of miming. This is a quintessential Your Confused Foreigners edition of this show and is full of our top immigrant moments. So if you're a foreigner who's struggling to navigate their way through British Christmas, or a native thinking that Britain has no traditions, or someone in between - this is the one for you. Enjoy!

We started our lives in the UK as...students. And, oh, what a start that was. Freshers' Week (which Anita completely misunderstood and bypassed), student hall life, international friends and cheap cider - these are some of the memories that define our university time. But they're not the only ones. In this episode, we reminisce about our uni life in Wales, discuss our views on the academic approach in the UK and compare it with other countries. So if you want to know just how lost immigrants can feel at a British uni (and what they learn from it), then this one is for you. Cheers!

It's 15 degrees outside and it's the first time we see the sun since October: it's summer time! Flip flops fly out of British wardrobes, lives move to parks and lidos, disposable barbecues are sold out in Tesco and the population of Britain feeds on strawberries and cream, watching tennis. In this sunny episode, we also reminisce about summers in Poland and lose ourselves in seasonal food nostalgia so you can get a taste of the Polish summer (pun intended - no excuse).

It's tea time at YLF! We see the UK as an extremely open-minded country but some things are sacred and untouchable here - and tea definitely tops that list. There are some strict rules when it comes to tea drinking and they are quite different from how we were raised to have our brew. We also look into the British coffee cups: what's in them, how the Brits have their coffee and whether it has the same status as tea. So take a seat and let's a have a cuppa together... with no milk.

Until we settled in Britain, we thought that roads and driving is more or less the same all across Europe. We could not be more wrong. And, no, it's not just about driving on the other side of the road. In this episode we navigate our way through the many novelties of British roads; magic roundabouts, meeting points and general lack of space for anything or anyone. Buckle up, it will be a fun ride.

If you're a native English speaker, you might not realise just how baffling the British politeness can be to us foreigners. We've been trying to guess the best response to "You ok?" for years. Or how many times we should say "please" in a sentence. We're still not sure. It can get stressful. In this episode, we laugh at our inability to decipher the common pleasantries of English culture and expose some serious faux pas that Polish directness has lead us to.

One of the most charming and confusing things about the English language are accents. Especially if, like us, you come from a country with exceptional language consistency! In this episode, we dissect accents in all directions possible: we discuss British pronunciation quirks, foreigners' (and our own) accents and explore whether the way we talk defines us. We get really honest about how much trouble and embarrassment accents have caused us and ponder why Poland is almost completely monotone...

"Why did you move to the UK?" we've been asked countless of times. In this first episode, we tell our own immigrant stories. We reveal why we decided to leave our home country and what attracted us to the UK. We talk about the surprises, the struggles, the tears and excitement. Did we feel foreign? Did we miss home? Did we hang out only with other Polish immigrants? Join us in this conversation where we find out a lot about each other and give you a glimpse of who Your Local Foreigners are.