Midnight Rambler

Sergei Glebov, my Russian history professor at Smith who is himself Russian, scoffed when I told him I would be in London for a semester abroad. London, he claimed, was not abroad. Not for an American such as myself, with an interest in world history and culture that had pushed me to take two of his classes (one on the Empire, one on the USSR). How could England, parent of the US, be foreign to me?

And maybe he had a point. The US, or at least the part I grew up in, was directly influenced by the British and Anglo-Saxon evidence is present in many aspects. We share a language, a body of literature, a history and special relationship like with no other country. And yet.

Perhaps it’s because of the similarities, but in the UK I am very aware of a dissonance. Yes, I speak the language and understand many cultural references; however there is a different air in London than in New York. ’Well, obviously,’ you say. ‘Of course they’re wildly different.’ Except that it’s not wild. There are skyscrapers and old quarters, suburbs and parks, public transport and coffee shops just as in every city. But here and now in London I feel uncomfortable in my own skin in a way I never did the other times I was here.

The last two times I was in London, it was for only a month each, and maybe that wasn’t long enough. I find myself more and more feeling a strong urge to go somewhere more familiar. As the weeks go by this stops being a fun little vacation and becomes more a reality: I live here, for the time being, and adjusting to that is scary.

It’s the tiniest things. It’s in the more subdued air of the passerby on the street. The absence of sales tax. The differences in the cars, the vernacular, the coinage, the food brands—all of it adds up in little ways to remind me I’m somewhere different. And maybe it’s because the culture is otherwise so similar that the smaller differences stand out more. A kind of cultural Uncanny Valley, if you will.

I sit in my room and berate myself, ‘what would you be doing if you were in the US? the exact same thing you’re doing now, so there’s no point feeling homesick.’ But it’s not the actions, it’s the atmosphere, the very air of this city that impresses upon me that I am an outsider.

And it’s when I’m walking back from the library in the small hours of the morning that I feel it most, because this is a situation I so often found myself in at Smith—breathing the cold night air after a night of schoolwork en route to my room. And at Smith I had friends and a phone to call home with, a constant link to familiar things that would ground me. Here I have nothing except my own thoughts and the ambience of a land so similar and yet so, so different.

Please Hello, America Back

I did not plan on having an adventure today, but sometimes these things happen, you know?

I got off the tube at Oxford Circus, took a stroll down Regent Street and then I found a tourist map which kindly informed me the Mexican Embassy was in the vicinity. That's when the adventure started. It's the little indent up near Hanover Square.

No, Father, I did not go in to sign the guestbook.

Most of my adventures continue in the same fashion: I look down a street, see something interesting, and pursue. And I swear I did not mean to find the New Bond Street Victoria's Secret store, which is their UK flagship location, but I found it, because wherever I am a Victoria's Secret will appear.

After that it was just a slew of embassies left and right, because I kept seeing flags and thinking 'I wonder what that is!' I went down Brook Street in pursuit of what turned out to be Claridge's--

--and then not even two buildings down the block there was the Argentinian Embassy, and then Italy, and Monaco, and the British Virgin Islands, and Indonesia, and then--completely by accident!-- I found the United States of America.

It's a bad picture because it was very dramatically backlit by the setting sun.

Far be it from me to tell the State Department what to do with their property but this does seem a tad overkill. There was a statue of FDR, and one of Reagan, and one of Eisenhower! His had multiple flowers laid at the base. I guess the British like Ike.

Interestingly there are a number of buildings that fly foreign flags that don't actually seem to be embassies. Two buildings were flying very large Greek and Bahraini flags, respectively, but Google tells me the embassies of Greece and Bahrain are located elsewhere. Actually Google also tells me I narrowly missed the Serbian Embassy. Ah well. I suppose embassies just tend to clump near each other, maybe it's easier for the British government to keep track of?

In other news, I've spent no inconsiderable amount of time shopping recently. I had to return a super cute pair of heels because they were too big, but they were £24 and in their place I scored a £10 pair of jeans and a £14 pair of slightly-less-cute-but-properly-sized heels, so who's the real winner here? (It's me.) Lord, I thought jeans shopping was complicated in America.

I'll tell you about my adventure in Birmingham...eventually. I'll get to it, I promise.

The toenail hasn't fallen off yet, which is annoying because I would rather it just get the whole proccess moving and also I'm beginning to doubt it ever will, which will be doubly aggravating when it inevitably does. I also went out again with my flatmates and friends and managed to skin my knee something fierce, which is a step up on the Grace's-Drunken-Injury scale. A sad, pathetic step. Although I'm finally being a real person with a real social life and not sitting in my room all the time, just 80% of the time, so I think I still win. I had fun, anyway, and isn't that what really matters? (Yes.)

The social life, yes, that. Becky says I'm her favorite flatmate, except she was inebriated at the time and I assume this excludes Raj with whom she is practically conjoined at the hip, but it counts. Chris bugs me incessantly to come out with all them and sometimes it even works. I get along well with Myfi and Michael (who reminds me eerily of James Cranston from high school). We all sat in Becky's room and watched bad movies on Tuesday night. The weather is improving rapidly, it's mild and sunny more often than not and I've been in high spirits lately.

This may be soon to change, however, as the semester is wrapping up and coursework is beginning to pile up. Lots of essays that make up ridiculous portions of my grade. I think the British have bizarre standards because I've had at least two of my professors halt the lecture in order to go over essay structure, referencing, and just really basic writing mechanic stuff I learned in high school. They don't get much practice, I suppose, seeing as how we're only writing like two papers for each class. Over the entire semester. Bizarre.

What I'm saying is that I got a 69 on that architecture paper. That's a very good grade in this country. It's barely-passing in the US but it's really high here. Anything above like a 70 basically means the professor thinks you should be publishing.

This is a very strong and well-structured essay. The relationship you raise between the use of brick and ‘constructional polychromy’ as a characteristic of the Victorian Style is interesting, and your reading of it is very thorough. Your vivid account of the building contributes to the construction of your argument. One of the points in which it would have been nice to have a more in depth development, is in the comparison of the interior with the exterior, the plain brick against the painted tiles. It is very nicely written and rigorously referenced. Good use of sources. Well done!

BOOM. Grace takes London by storm. This is extra good because this class is counting towards my major at Smith.

I have exactly one final exam and it's on May 12. So I basically have from March 31 to early May to do whatever I want. We'll see what happens. Maybe I'll conquer Latvia.