Someone told me before I got here that Salford had the greatest rate of teenage pregnancy than anywhere else in England.

It's true.

On a twenty-five minute walk to the area's shopping centre and back, I saw more teenage mothers than I could count on both hands. Way more.

They are everywhere, pushing the same brand of Tesco strollers and dressing their children in the same Tesco clothes. Apparently the UK has a teenage pregnancy issue throughout the country, and Salford is an exemplary city.

The city is referred to as the poorer cousin of Manchester: a lot of buildings are dilapidated and rundown, or altogether vacant. However, I have seen several blocks of construction and development taking place closer to the university campus.

Some of my roomates have referred to many of the people of Salford as scallies. It's a slang term in the UK that refers to a person on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. The definition is well understood among the British, and implies income, job, attitude, patterns of speech, patterns of behaviour and dress to name a few.

As scally is also a CHAV. Apparently a CHAV is a term that encompasses a broader group of people. I have to ask again what the acronym stands for, but I do remember that it ends with And Violent.

I saw several "scallies" today as I walked into the shopping centre, or at least what have been described as such individuals. Many of the women are overweight, more often than not pushing a baby stroller. Their hair is worn either tightly pulled back and slicked down, or in two French braids that run down either side of the head. Their clothing is such as you would find at Tesco, and had the theme of fleurescent pink. Tattoos, oversized immitation gold earrings and thick immitation gold necklaces with name medallions were common to all scallies I saw today.

Standing in line at the post office was an experience I've never had before either: a line (queue) of twenty people that included four toddlers in stollers, three young children on foot, a handful of scallies, one or two individuals with questionable mental stability, a near scrap over someone's place in line and percentage of people who showered this morning well out numbered by those who did not.

Walking home I heard two police sirens, one ambulance driver, a handful of cat-calling passersby (which included the ambulance driver himself on the way back from his emergency) and the little voice inside my head, "You're not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy."

Oh! Canada.