Week 11 Impressions by Hannah Noll-Willensky

As much as I love living in London, it can sometimes feel a little too close to home. The culture here is different, but not that different than what I’m used to. English is spoken everywhere and America and Britain’s pop cultures are very intertwined. Though there are key differences (namely the terrifying driving habits), the transition into living here was an easy one. There are times that I forget that I’m not in America.

That is why I want to talk about my experiences outside of the UK during this program, which have definitely been some of the highlights of my time in Europe. I have to say that before coming here I was not expecting to travel outside of England, thinking it would be too expensive or that I wouldn’t have the time. But in reality, travel here is much more affordable than in the states, mostly because of airlines like ryanair and easyjet. So, for Spring break my roommates and I decided to travel to Portugal. Best decision EVER.

We had such a good time, probably mostly due to the amazing hostel we stayed in. The weather was beautiful, we made friends with locals, and met people from all over the world. Though we liked the city we went to, it was really the people we had met that made the trip as good as it was. By the end of our time there we had met people from Australia, Canada, Japan, France, Germany, America, Ireland, Sweden, and New Zealand. Not bad for a 4 day trip. And as a result, we were invited to visit our new friends where they were from.

A few days after getting back to London, we went to Brighton to vist our friend Elin, orignally from Sweden. Then 3 weeks later, we travelled to Marseille, France to visit some friends that we met at our hostel in Portugal. I can’t tell you what a different perspective you get on a new place when you are with people from that area. With that in mind, I have compiled a list of key lessons I’ve learned about travelling around continental Europe as a guide for future students abroad:

1. It is always a good idea to learn some words in the national language, a few I’ve found helpful—“What?”, “Thank you”, and “Stop staring at me like that, you creeper.”
2. Don’t trust a man who introduces his male friends as his mother and his grandma. This should immediately strike you as suspicious.
3. Sometimes flight attendants say “this is standard procedure when flying in the hours of darkness.”
4. Always leave two hours early for an international flight, or you will miss your flight.
5. Make sure you have a stash of emergency money in case you do miss your flight. Otherwise you will get very hungry.
6. Don’t spend all of your time visitng tourist attractions. This gets boring and you will feel like you didn’t get a real taste of the culture at the end of the trip.
7. Try talking to locals, this can be very confusing, but always entertaining.
8. Seeing weird street entertainers is a guarantee, no matter where you are. If you happen to be in Marseille, I would suggest keeping an eye out for the man painted white, and balancing a cat on each arm while feeding them fancyfeast. BIZARRE.
9. Get a map of the city you are in. Being lost is never fun.
10. If you are friendly, polite, and make at least some effor to speak the language, most people will respond in the same way and be very willing to help you wherever you are.

Week 10 Impressions by Shaun Goodman

Some of you might have heard about the political rally in London over the weekend, and I want to assure you we were some of the window-crashing rioters ourselves. Okay maybe we weren’t crashing any windows, but a handful of us went to see the marches. Those of us that went saw peaceful marching and rallying over the weekend. The economy is obviously a huge topic in England, and the large march was in response to numerous government budget cuts that are putting thousands out of jobs. I went to the rally, and it was great to see so many people come together, for me to be part of the activism going on in the world at the moment, and see repercussions of something we had only learned about in class and read about in the newspapers. The size of the rally was in the hundreds of thousands and it was amazing to see that many people together.

Besides actively protesting the government, everyone is busy wrapping up our time here. People are visiting everything they haven’t have had time to see (including a few lucky ones visiting France!), figuring out travel plans after the trip, writing final papers, trying to save up a little per-diem up and trying to see our London-friends as much as possible. Last week I somehow packed two weeks worth of activities into seven days.

Last Friday I went to a Rugby game that was an interesting American-British cultural mix. It was University College London (the University I work at here) vs. King’s College (one of the Cambridge colleges). It was very British in the sense that one, it was rugby, two, the students on the King’s College side wore button down shirts and ties instead of face painted bare chests, and three, both teams cheers were long and clever instead of some classic short American cheers with profanities in them (FU LAKERS cha cha cha cha cha). Before the game I asked the professor I work with if he knew UCL’s college colors; he had no idea. Not only would a professor know his University’s colors in America, he would own 3 free t-shirts with the colors on it, his office might have college swag and the school’s website would have the colors plastered all over it. Americanization crept into the game when half time rolled around and cheerleaders, a dance team, and mascots came on the field. King’s College should not advertise this group of Cheerleaders; they were utterly horrible.

Although the game had its American moments, it was wonderful to see a Rugby live game for the first time in my life. Seeing players get tackled by four of five men and hand off the ball instead of having the ref stop the game was quite amazing. I also enjoyed the randomness of the ball thrown, then kicked, then handed off, and then caught from a boy held up by his teammates. I don’t think I will be joining this full contact-no helmet sport anytime soon, but I would recommend anyone go see a game.

Week 10 Impressions by Leah Wyllie

Life in the British Workplace

I have the most wonderful internship in all of London: I am lucky enough to work at The Kid’s Cookery School. At “KCS,” we work to encourage children--and their parents--to make healthier food choices. We work with children from all economic backgrounds and of varying degrees of mental and physical abilities. Some classes are held in the KCS building, while others occur on location. The Kid’s Cookery School has a cargo van that carries two ovens, a sink, a hand washing station, and a demonstration table to various schools and learning centers. I have been able to meet new people and have traveled to many different places that the average London tourist never gets to see.

A typical day starts on the tube. The Kid’s Cookery School is a 15-minute tube ride westbound on the Piccadilly line. As our home base at Gloucester Road is just west of the hustle and bustle of Central London, it is usually pretty quiet. The train is always littered with newspapers that have been abandoned by businessmen and women who rode the train from the eastern suburbs and alighted in the center of the city. I am not quite sure what to make of this, but have brainstormed a few of theories. The first is that Londoners do not actually read these newspapers in depth, but use them as a protective shield from conversation and eye contact with strangers. The second is that they only buy newspapers and pretend to read them in order to look more informed and posh than they actually are. The third is that they find the articles completely compelling and want to be sure that their neighbors get the opportunity to read them too. The fourth, and most likely, is that they just read as much as possible and do not want to carry the paper around with them all day. My theories do not have extreme importance, but I had fun coming up with them. Either way, I have never paid for a newspaper.

Once I get to work, there is usually a little list made up especially for me. Sometimes I prep for classes, and sometimes I get to test recipes. I really enjoy testing the recipes. I now can make tiramisu, Welsh rarebit, muffins, flapjacks (oat bars), rolls, pizza, oat biscuits, and chocolate chip cookies (from memory). The best part of testing recipes is definitely the part where I get to eat my creation.

When teaching lessons, I am assigned a table of children (usually 4 or 5) to work with. In the beginning weeks, they would ask, “Is this what it is supposed to look like?” or “Is this done?” and I would panic and think to myself, “I have no idea!” Because I am now much more confident with my cooking abilities and am more familiar with the KCS recipes, I can say, “That needs more flour,” or “Stir it a bit more.” The children have all been wonderful. Their excitement and energy bounces off of the walls. They usually have lots of questions about my accent and where I am from. They mostly want to know if I am from California or how many times I have been there. I have also been asked if I like Justin Beiber.

I have picked up two British habits because of the amount of time I spend with my British co-workers and “clients.” The first is the habit of tea drinking. I have never been a coffee fiend and have always enjoyed a cup of tea from time to time, but at work, I almost always have a cup of tea at my reach. My colleagues and supervisors have taught me how to prepare a perfect cup of tea: let it steep a bit, add in sugar (1 teaspoon for me) and a splash of milk, take out the teabag, and enjoy. Tea drinking one of the British stereotypes that I have found to be true. The second trait I have inherited from my time in England is a bit of a British accent. It is actually less of an accent and more of an issue of enunciation, but it sounds very British. Since beginning work, I have started to ask questions with the British inflection. It is the strangest thing. My roommates first pointed it out to me, and when my family came to visit, my “accent” was one of the first things they noticed. Since realizing this phenomenon, I have tried to revert back to my West Coast American ways because I always teased Madonna for having a “fake” British accent, but I really cannot help it.

Leaving London in three weeks will be one of the most difficult goodbyes that I have ever encountered. It is hard to imagine life away from London and the mostly wonderful people who live and work here. I will always have a soft spot for London.

Week 9 Impressions by Caitlyn Homer

The Language Barrier…or the American Cultural Barrier?

One of the many perks of studying abroad in London, I assumed, was being able to communicate in the same language. I was prepared for different words and phrases for basic day-to-day things (e.g. restroom à toilet or ‘loo’) but what I was not prepared for was the different style of communication I would be thrown into.

In American culture, at least from my experience and perspective, work and personal worlds tend to have clear boundaries between each other. For example, the office kitchen is an inappropriate place to celebrate a coworker’s birthday, unless of course the big boss isn’t around, in which case by all means have your cake and eat it too. If not, save it for happy hour when everyone is off the clock and not under constant scrutiny. What I’m really getting at is that casual and personal banter in an American office space is uncommon and…kind of sneaky.

Sneaky doesn’t happen here in British office spaces, it seems. My privatized American self has been questioned, cross-examined, discussed, criticized, and praised and sometimes all at once. Personal boundaries are irrelevant. In fact, they are entirely relevant and central to the working culture here, especially in the sector I’ve been placed in (or thrown into, rather).

I suppose I should give a little background on what exactly I mean by this. My internship placement is at Elfrida Rathbone Camden with the Leighton Project. The Leighton Project is an education project for young adults with learning difficulties. Upon receiving my placement, I assumed I would be working with students with learning difficulties such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, etc. and I felt entirely prepared for it due to my sensitive and understanding personality (or so I thought)…but boy I was wrong.

The learning difficulties I work with are severe learning difficulties, usually associated with Downs Syndrome or autism spectrum. Normally, when working with learning difficulties of any nature in the United States, I would be expected to abide by privacy laws of all sorts and sign documents protecting this. I expected to have that expectation here in the UK, but I came to find out that I was very wrong. Instead, open dialogue of everyone’s disabilities are not only encouraged but also necessitated. For example, when one of my students began to have a meltdown about a task we were doing in class, my first inclination was to remove him from the classroom setting so that he could calm down and talk about it if (and only if) he wanted to. I quickly found out that this was the wrong move when I was told to sit back down and tell the class what was going on. I found this alarming and cruel, but my student did not. He openly told his classmates what he found difficult about the task and why he was struggling with it, and his classmates seemed to appreciate this and chimed in with about their own struggles and needs. Classes here are typically run with open dialogue at all times and although it is startling to me, it seems to be extremely effective. It really does make more sense to have an open dialogue with everyone about needs and limits of disabilities rather than sweeping it under the rug and cross your fingers nobody notices. That’s another funny thing about living in the UK—it seems as though everyone notices everything, and yes, they will talk about it and sometimes will stare at you awkwardly once it is brought up. This whole “talking about everything” has been a challenge for me to both understand and adapt to, but I have come to appreciate it. Although it seems like nothing gets done in the office space, this constant (sometimes indirect) chatter is the real element to British productivity…and I like it.

Week 9 Impressions by Steph Schwartz

Since entering college, when people ask me where I live, I've developed the habit of replying (mostly in jest) by saying “nowhere.” I started replying this way mostly out of ease, especially since arriving in London. Does anyone really care that I was born in Minnesota (it's in the middle of the US, farthest north besides Alaska) but go to school in Oregon (it's right above California) and am now living in South Kensington (I know, I know, but I'd never live there if it were coming out of my own pocket!)? Not really, is my guess. But lately I've been thinking about it – do I (and perhaps many of us on this program can identify with this feeling) really live anywhere? The reason I've brought this issue up to begin with is that, no matter how comfortable I feel being in London, the people who live here seem to always see me as a tourist and a visitor. This begs the question: how long does one have to live somewhere in order to live there? If I lived in London for the rest of my life, would my mid-western accent forever brand me as a tourist?

Back up to spring break two weeks ago. Myself, Ian and Caitlyn spent three days in Venice and three in Rome. In Italy, we were tourists. In fact, almost everyone in Italy were tourists. As soon as we stepped foot within a mile radius of the Vatican we were bombarded by people shoving pamphlets in our faces, trying to get us to take this tour or that one. We were charged for extra items on our bills at restaurants because the owners knew we didn't understand what was going on. I told myself that this was just what was to be expected as an American traveling in Italy. Sure we paid a bit more and were hassled quite a bit, but it was well worth the experience, right? Since returning to London after spring break, I'm beginning to see that the way I'm often perceived here to Londoners is not extremely different from how I was perceived by the Italians in Italy. I stubbornly tell myself I've lived here for 2.5 months, dang-it! I'm no tourist! The rest of the city does not see it my way.

By some miracle I do not understand, every guy standing outside of a currency exchange manages to shove a flier in my face, but not in the faces of the Brits around me. How do they know? I didn't even open my mouth! Is it something having to do with eye contact?! I'm completely clueless. It's small things like this that make me feel like I'm some sort of American spy or something, doing a horrible job of blending in and “playing it cool.” Another example – I've been working at my internship for around six weeks now. We all have. In the building I work at there is a coffee shop with only 2 regular employees. I go to this coffee shop all the time and the employees say hi to me and recognize me every time. That being said, I NEVER get the employee discount. I have been given the 15% discount exactly once the whole time I've been working there! I take this quite seriously. What exactly do they think I'm doing there 3 days a week? They know I work there, they've seen me with my coworkers! No one else has to ask for their employee discount so I certainly shouldn't have to! Once again I feel like a fake employee. Sure, I work here, but since I sound funny I probably don't actually work here. Even today, while I was at a Tesco doing what I normally do (harassing people to stop smoking) I found that a large percentage of the people I talked to were more interested in asking me where I was from and telling me about their trips to New York than they were in quitting their deadly habit.

Despite all my whinings, I do feel like I'm doing a much better job blending in now than I was two months ago. My coworkers say my English accent is fit for tea with the Queen! (I think this means it's Hollywood-esk and fake, but I won't complain). Maybe by the time we go back I'll be English enough to fit in here. I'm guessing I'll be so authentic at that point that everyone in Portland will ask me; “where are you from? I went to London once...”

Week 8 Impressions by Sarafina Tabrum

Halfway through our London study abroad program, I have already heard the cries, “Don’t talk about going home.” We have adjusted to our British/English/cosmopolitan lifestyle with frequent walks through Hyde Park and tea with milk-chocolate digestive biscuits. We participate in the pub culture and all have learned to enjoy a strong cider or two. Yet, in a blink of an eye, February ended and we began to hear of midterm exams and half-term break.

“So, you are on half-term break next week?” asks my colleague at my internship in Wandsworth Prison.

“Half-term break?”

“Darling, half-term breaks are school holidays. Don’t you know if you are getting one of those?”

Of course, I know the exact dates of spring break and have filled the vacation days with plans for a North African holiday. I’m afraid to say that the dates of our midterms were more foreign to me. In the past two months, I have learned of the wanderlust of the British. The adventurous spirit and perpetual quest for sunshine that compelled them to colonize half the world exists in the function of tourism. Brits are amazing travelers. They host a large number of international tourists and also use the British sterling to build the tourist economies of other countries. While the United Kingdom does not have weather to boast of, they are in close proximity to countries of a more sunny disposition.

Attempting to follow this cultural practice of the Brits, my fellow LC Londoners and I used our spring break/half-term holiday to follow the sun. Unfortunately, some discovered that the first week of March does not always mean sun in Southern Europe. As it were, this particular week yielded snow in Venice, snow in Madrid and icy rain in Rome. Portugal was okay for the most part, but the locals certainly looked strangely at the girls who decided that 65˚F was warm enough for shorts. Early Monday morning after our break, we shuffled into class and discussed the common shortcoming of most trips. “It was cold,” we whined to our professor. He looked at us a bit pityingly and said that most go skiing in France or Austria over the February/March break.

Venturing a bit further than Southern Europe, I spent the week in Fez, Morocco. I found the sun as well as the cold desert night winds. In a true tourist move, my only source of warmth was my black hoodie and several scarves that I bought in the souks of the medina. By day, I sat in the sun in the café terraces and drank hot, sugary mint tea. By night, I went to bed early- there really wasn’t much of a nightlife for the solo woman traveler in this Islamic culture. Instead, I discovered the secrets of the narrow footpaths that turn and wind amongst the stalls and residences. I met the artisans of the markets and saw the craftsmanship in action. I also met up with fellow LC students who were studying Arabic and living in home-stay families. My experience in Morocco illuminated many of my London habits and rituals. I found myself missing Café Momo down the street from Metrogate or craving the company of my London comrades. At one point, I even missed the dry humor of my colleagues at the prison (which I usually just smile and nod to--‘Haha, good one, Michelle’). Rather than miss familiar Portland or even more familiar Ojai, I thought of life back in London. Now, back in our London home away from home, I can frequent the places and talk with the people I dearly missed after just a week away. And I can purposely not think about leaving London in April.

Week 6 Impressions by Megan Percell

Now that I am all settled in and am capable of effectively giving someone directions (most of the time) I think that I can really give a good perspective of London. I wrote to my parents the other day with the email subject “im a Londoner... can you believe it??” What’s funny is, I can barely believe it! Partly because I have been waiting for this moment for many years and preparing for months... so to think that this time is actually here is pretty surreal.

After two and a half months I can confidently say that I have acclimated pretty well. When I first started informing friends and family that I would be going abroad they were very happy for me, but also explained that they didn't think it was going to be TOO much different... “New York on steroids, thats all” they said. While I do agree to a certain extent, there have definitely been some instances where I felt like Dorothy, and said underneath my breath , “Toto, I don't think were in Kansas anymore.” I've gone through the typical linguistic misconnects, pronouncing or phrasing a word one way instead of the common “British way.” It’s actually a very interesting experience. First you get this really awkward silence, a face expression that my dog gets when I start making funny faces at her, and response as if I’ve just uttered Chinese mixed with Zulu.

I have also been sent in the completely wrong direction due to my lack of specificity. For example, in a desperate search to get my computer fixed I spent 45 minutes asking several people if they could point me in the direction of the mac store, all of which pointed in the same direction. After an exhausting hunt I look up and see Mac, the makeup store. Yes, I do understand that mac is my computer and not the name of the store, but I mean come on!! I at least thought my point would come across... but apparently not. Since then, I have been obnoxiously correcting people when they ask for Vaseline instead of “petroleum jelly” or a Q-Tip instead of a cotton bud.

Although it is over a small matter I had an incident that was culturally eye opening. To familiarize yourself with me a bit, I happen to have certain type of relationship with cheese. Some call it obsession... I’d like to think of it as more of a... strong like. And because of this “strong like” I happen to ask for extra cheese on everything that I order, and sometimes even add it if it is nowhere in sight within the food description.

Within the first week, my classmates and I went over Imperial College, where many of the students hang out and grab something to eat or drink. I went up and ordered, politely of course, nachos with extra cheese. I got the weird silence and the confused Chinese/Zulu response. “You want what?” they said. Extra cheese I said a little louder, just in case the problem was that they couldn't hear me over the music. When I went back to grab my plate there definitely wasn’t extra cheese on my nachos. I took it back to my table to ask my friends just to make sure I wasn’t being dramatic. Once they verified that there in fact wasn’t extra cheese, I went back to the counter and politely, explained the situation. The worker then snatched the plate and said okay. When he came back he dumped, what looked like 7 pounds, of cheese on top and slid the plate my way.

I’m usually not the one to complain about cheese, but since I felt like this act was a little malicious I decided to bring it up during discussion in class the next day. When I told my teacher about the incident, he laughed and joked about it for a while, then said that what I did is a very “American characteristic”. In the states you can pretty much completely revamp the menu and it’s not even questioned, but in the UK, you get what you get. It doesn’t really matter if you’re paying for it, it’s not really your place to change what is being offered. Not to say that all restaurants and servers feel this way, but it is very common in the UK to have this mindset.

Although I may be in “’New York on steroids”, culturally there are many small things I have learned and many things, big and small, that I will continue to learn.