Week 2 Impressions by Sarafina Tabrum

The air was still cool on my face as I opened the door to the outside. I exited the building and felt the quiet of the South Kensington morning. Barely 8AM, I saw a few people jogging towards the Queen’s Gate of Hyde Park. I walked the other way towards the ever-familiar Gloucester Road tube station. I mentally checked the contents of my bag for my passport, police background check, Oyster Card, heavy coin bag and most importantly: the directions to Wandsworth Prison.

On the ten-minute walk to the tube station, I planned what to say during my interview to intern at the charity organization, Prison Advice and Care Trust. I would talk about my interest in the politics of prison and my desire to focus on the ever-growing incarcerated population who are both marginalized and stigmatized members of society. Perhaps I would explain my perception on the alienation of poverty and the injustice of racial discrimination. Lost in these thoughts, I swept through the wind-tunnel leading to the Piccadilly Line and clambered onto the tube towards Victoria Station. Squashed into a carriage with mostly men in business attire, we were off.

To exit the packed subway, I crawled through the crowd, perfecting my British accent with each ‘Sorry’ that I muttered. I left the Victoria Underground Station for the Victoria Train Station and felt waves of people brush around me as they exited the station for central London. The train station was even more crowed than the tube. I stood my ground and gaped upwards, looking for signs to Grindsfeld East. Bustled by the crowd and slightly right of my original position, I headed towards Platform 14. Worse than the Picadilly wind tunnel were the hundreds of early-riser Londoners intent to get to work on time by any means necessary. Everyone pushed their way through the mob. Shockingly, I saw one woman who had fallen down the stairs on her way through the forceful crowd. She lay at the bottom of the stairs with several women trying to help her up. Thankfully, I found the train in one piece and boarded the train (ignoring the first-class only sign) and sat in peace (if only for a few minutes).

Fifteen minutes later, I was off the train searching for the bus. I asked a lovely man at the ticket counter if he knew of Bus 77 or 219. “Where are you going, love?” “Wandsworth Prison!” He looked at me oddly but drew a detailed map complete with stop names and directions. He also informed me that he had been in the prison for seventeen years. He held my gaze for a moment before elucidating, “The good side.” I thanked him and walked towards the bus: the last leg of the trip.

I rode the bus. I missed the stop. I rode the bus in the other direction, got off, and finally arrived at the destination most people do not desire. I headed towards the visitor’s center of one of the largest men’s prisons in Europe. Eager to interview for the position and begin my internship, I sat and observed the action of the prison’s visitor’s center. I watched as women shed their coats, hats and belongings. To meet with their partners, boyfriends, fathers and husbands, they simply took their ID cards and loose change. While I anticipate the challenges of working in the prison, I am anxious to begin this meaningful work. No longer lost on the journey of the public transit, I sat and began to anticipate the possibilities of working with this charity.

Week 1 Impressions by Caitlyn Homer

I have survived my first week in London and yes, it has been getting easier. Looking back on my first impression upon arrival, its kind of funny to think about how terrified I was. I felt turned upside down and inside out and it was almost as if they had done this specifically to confuse, like buttons on toilets and driving on the left side of the street. Oh, and creepy men right off the bat to top it all off.

The good news is, none of that really turns me upside-down anymore and I have started to appreciate it little by little...like the toilet buttons. Steph (aka my roommate) figured out that it isn't just one button with a design, it's actually two buttons and the smaller side is used for light loads like tinkles, and the larger side for big loads like.... you know… serious business. It makes "going to the toilet" a lot more fun.

Buttons, who knew?

Since that discovery, life in London is still on the rise.

Arriving in London was, for lack of a better word, a doozy. Local police removed someone from the airplane immediately after landing and it was exciting. I was surprised to see how kind they were in what would normally be a very serious (or dangerous) situation. Customs was a strange experience, mostly due to the fact that Maddie and I seemed to be the only Americans in line.

Post-customs, Maddie and I were starving, so of course we head to the nearest airport pub for pasta, paninis, Magners ciders, and coronas at no later than 11:30am. Yes, I was the American who ordered the Corona at a fine British establishment and got laughed at by the Asian waiter.

Have you ever heard an Asian/English hybrid accent? Neither had I until that experience.

Post-Corona, I was excessively tired. I was actually surprised about how mood-congruent the weather actually was. It was beyond dismal and dark and rainy when we finally got outside, and all I wanted to do was pile my suitcases up in a corner of the train station and nap. I got maybe a good 49.436 seconds in before the train pulled up and we were off. Twenty minutes later and a terrifying taxi ride on the left side of the road, we made it to the Metrogate House.

The Metrogate House (aka our flat aka "dorm") looks incredible from the outside. It is located in the posh, affluent area of South Kensington .... very close to Hyde Park The interior, however, is beyond my understanding. I am not kidding when I say it is a maze that never ends. One door leads to one staircase which leads to more doors which then leads to many more doors and....it gets complicated. It doesn't help that the walls and floors are all the same color, either. I knew the kitchen was going to be tiny but tiny is an understatement, especially one used to accommodate 16 people. I kind of really love it.

Classes are a short walk from the Metrogate house and our first round went well. Our professors are all very interesting and entertaining and make 3 hours go by pretty quickly. For those of you just biting your nails off to find out what our class schedule is, here you go:

Monday--
10:00am-1:00pm--- Contemporary Britain
2:00pm-5:00pm-- Social Welfare Issues in the United Kingdom

Tuesday--
Meeting with Tom (and Mary, aka our trip leaders aka parents aka BFFs) from 9:00am-10:00am
1:00pm-- 4:00pm -- Diaspora Studies

The internship portion of this semester doesn't start until January 26. When we get started, we will end up working on Wednesday afternoons and full days both Thursday and Friday, so we’ll have extremely full weeks pretty much all the time with hopefully some travelling on the weekends. So far, we’ve managed to squeeze in a lot of good stuff like visit the Freud Museum and Stonehenge and Bath.

The Freud Museum left a major impression on me. It was one of those experiences where being there is really more amazing than what is actually there. The museum was Freud's home after he moved out of Vienna in 1938. I was hoping to be able to walk through the entire house still intact, but the only rooms that were full on display were the entry, staircase, empty dining room, the backyard views, and of course, the office.

Being in Freud's office was a weird experience.

Every text, theory, and psychology course I have ever taken has had something to do with Freud, and there I was, standing in the same room where the man behind many of those theories did his work. I stood in the same room where Freud did all of his thinking and analyzing and it was hard to take it all in.

I felt entirely uninterested by the audio tour we were supposed to be on due to the life crisis I was having in the office. I wanted to bring a chair into the office and sit in there until I was able to grasp the fact that I really was where I was, and that he actually existed in the same spot that I currently existed in. He also died in that office (1939), which was an even weirder thing to keep in mind.

I might go back and ask if I can pay a couple extra pounds to do just that. Just to get it all straightened out in my head. I disagree with so much of his stuff but that's the crazy part: Freud can't be ignored. And because of that, I respect him. I just need some time with it now that I am forced to face the fact that he did actually exist and I came that close to where my entire education, for the most part, originated.

Overall, my first week in London has literally felt like a circus to me. If you had to ask me what my first major impression of the UK was, I would definitely tell you that it is a lot harder than I ever expected. For starters, there is definitely a language barrier. Londoners have all these strange phrases and different words for things (rubbish-->garbage) and definitely get a lot less patient once they hear the brash "r" roll off my tongue.

I've been picking up some strange phrases that Londoners use for activities that Americans make seem so....boring. To end, here's a list (which I'll keep adding to as I keep my ears open):

Hoovering ---> Vacuuming: Up until I heard this term, I totally thought the Hoover vacuum was an American novelty. To hear it used as the official verb for vacuuming is kind of ....exciting. It makes me want to Hoover. Hoovering sounds much more lovely than vacuuming.

Popping---> Putting something somewhere: I've heard this term more times than I can count on my fingers and toes. It is thrown around quite a bit, mostly when a Brit is asking you to do something. For example, I had my blanket on my lap on the airplane before landing and the flight attendant said, "'Scuse me madam would you mind popping that under your seat for me please?" From what I can deduct, 'popping' means to place an item elsewhere, or just the moving of something in general. For example, person can 'pop' in and out of rooms. Popping on....

Pissed ----> Really, really wasted: We were warned about this term on the first day here. Americans apparently throw this term around too loosely here and all Brits interpret, "I'm SO pissed right now" to mean, "I'm so drunk right now I can't tell the difference between the sky and the floor." This is now a joke in my group because we'll sit at the pub and conjure up every different kind of phrase having to do with "pissed" that we can think of, of course with the intent to draw attention from the evasive Britons themselves.

Cloak room ---> Coat closet: Maddie found this one out in a humiliating way. We were on the prowl for decent nightlife and called a place to see if they had a coat check, but got the response, "A coat check? ......a COAT check? .....a coat CHECK?......" then in the background, "OOOOO, a CLOAK ROOM" followed by, "AhAHAHAHAHAHAHaAA...oooAHAHAHAHA."

Cheerio!

Week 1 Impressions by Shaun Goodman

In the first two weeks in London every part of the day has been in some way new and different. Simple acts such as walking down the street or going on a run have given me a new experience and impression of the London life. My senses have seen, smelled, tasted, heard, and felt an eclectic group of British qualities. The most visual difference to me is the accessibility to historical artifacts. Within a square mile from our house we have an old palace, T.S. Elliot’s old residence, a huge King Albert monument, a Princess Diana monument and more. Beyond the shallow aesthetic differences, this access creates a different feeling of historical relevance to your location at any time. While wearing my modern running clothes in Hyde Park, as soon as I see King Albert’s lavish twenty or so yard high golden monument I am reminded of the country’s history, feel like I am in the presence of that time period for a brief moment and get reminded of the country’s long legacy and history. Even walking down our block with the classic Georgian architecture, black cabs and double Decker busses make me feel like I am in the Sean Connery 007 days (the 10 Mercedes and 15 BMWs on our block do not hurt this fantasy either). While to some being stuck in the past might be considered one of Britain’s faults, I love having the historical presence around us and how highly the British value those before them. These feelings of experiencing and being part of a country’s past certainly occurred when we went to Stonehenge, Bath, and the Freud museum. Additionally, I have noticed these values have rubbed off on some local Brits with one of our teachers (Mr. David Edye) seeming to know the year-by-hear history of all of Europe; as well as hearing some local Jewish students I ate with at their Hillel successfully try to name off the past few hundred years’ royalty.

My other sensual observances include the smell of a more urban life and everything it has to offer—i.e. different foods, more pollution in the air and the distinct smell of the lower underground lines. I have gotten to taste real food with zero pesticides in it. Although the food we buy does not last as long on your shelf, it is refreshing to know your food is organic and it seems to me some of their produce really does taste richer. I have felt the cold. I would say it is colder here than in Portland but less wet. Besides our first day we have not gotten much rain. Hearing differences include ambulances every 20 minutes and many different accents. English accents might just barely be the most common one I have heard here. I often hear Chinese, French, Eastern European, and Indian accents. This is supported by a statistic we learned in class: one out of every three people in London is an immigrant. So far I have no complaints from the changes and impressions I am getting from the city and am excited to explore other parts of the city, go on more trips, and create new impressions of the city as I get to know it better.