seeing dollar signs

I've plunked down in an alternate world where everything is reversed, mirror image, and when my instinct is to look left, I have to look right to keep from getting struck down.

OK, I'm being dramatic. I'm just having a hard time getting used to the whole driving on the left side of the street thing here in Cambridge, England, my new home for the next six months.

And I'm just talking about dealing with this as a pedestrian. I want to get a bike but I'm afraid of what will happen. Maybe it's a good thing I'm procrastinating on that purchase.

Things don't seem too expensive here--oh, only 300 for a new bike--until I do the conversion into dollars and then my jaw drops. It's not exactly fair to do that since I'm getting paid in pounds, not dollars, but I have to do the conversion for now to make sense of things. Then everything seems expensive, but I'm getting a sense of what a good deal is and isn't. Like, $2 for a stunted can of Coke is reasonable. Go figure. I don't have an example yet of something that's a surprisingly good deal. Believe me, I'm lookin.

And I haven't even hung out in London yet. Ugh.