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!