Oberlin

Pip pip everyone!

I do apologize for abandoning you, dear reader, for this embarrassingly long amount of time. The only adequate explanation I can give is that London, and the preparation that is required before coming here, is all consuming. Not even a moment to write about it! Not totally true, of course, but I am here now and that is what matters. I'm sitting on my cozy bed in a flat in Hampden House on the intersection of Weymouth St. and Great Portland St. in the neighborhood of Bloomsbury in the city of Westminster in the city of London. I write this because I am not sure where else to start this post. Physical location seems to be the most logical starting point--so you can just imagine me in the eye of your mind in this simple bed, with my charming roommate sitting on hers eating some Skittles.

London, as I read in a book about literature about London earlier in Winter Term (one of the few semi-productive endeavors that I undertook in the month of January), is difficult to know. Obviously, I have been here only a week. You cannot get to know a piece of cheese or even the plate on which it sits in a week, much less a massive international hub of ideas and culture and history. In lieu of trying to synthesize my experiences thus far, I am just going to write about a few different things that I have seen or heard or thought since here, and maybe by the end I will have some broader point to make. For your convenience (more for mine, really) I will number each point. Tally ho!

1. Londoners know if you are a tourist. Granted, tourists pretty much anywhere in the world are very recognizable, especially when non-city people visit urban places. As a small town person, I can say that we don't always get the no-smiling-at-anyone-because-they-might-bite-you attitude that seems useful in a city, but I digress. When you walk down the walk in a group of 25 (which we keep doing), there is no question that you do not fit here. I would say also that Americans have a distinct feeling of...bigness here. We are louder, certainly, but also the brassiness of our accents in comparison with the lilting (though sometimes totally indiscernible) accents of the UK makes our voices just seem massive. If our voices were driving on a highway (bear with me), then the English voice would be a speedy little electric smart car driving with wit and a thorough driving education that is passed rudely in the right lane by the roaring and "these aren't chips these are fries" SUV of the American voice. This is obviously a metaphor formed by cultural stereotypes, but I have not been able to help feeling this about the Americans that I have seen here and how I feel about myself.

2. In London, the cars have the right of way, not pedestrians. It has been quite a shift from the pedestrian attitude that dominates in Oberlin. I think that if London drivers (cabbies in particular) were transported to the streets of Oberlin, the student population would die out quickly. As it is a similar outcome kind of situation (Oberlin pedestrians in London streets), we are all vigilantly on our toes.

3. Thus far, the incredible things that I have been fortunate enough to see are these: the Houses of Parliament, a view of London from the London Eye, the Old Vic Theatre (owned by Kevin Spacey! That was a bit out of left field for me to be honest), the Elgin Marbles and the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum (a mere 100 yards from the Oberlin-in-London program office), a massive and drunken crowd of Kiwis celebrating New Zealand's day of independence outside of Parliament, and the Queen herself on a jog in Regent's Park (the last is a total lie. She prefers power lifting in her personal gym in Buckingham Palace).

4. Regent's Park, which is very conveniently close to our flat, is a perfect place for walking and, as I have been very happy to find, running. I have been running every other day because of the time crunch on Mondays and Wednesdays (class from 9-1030 and then 130-430 and then usually a play at 730) but the massive amounts of walking that we do every day and the six flights of stairs we climb to get to our flat provide enough activity on off days to feel sated. The London Zoo is in Regent's Park, and although I heard the wild call of some creature (perhaps a zebra? Hippogriff?) across the green of the park yesterday morning, the only animals that I have seen without entering the zoo proper have been some mellow camels munching on hay in their enclosure. I plan to tour the zoo once the weather warms up, and hopefully that will be soon.

5. On that note, it has been blisteringly cold here. Not by Ohio or Oberlin standards, but definitely by the standards of a person who brought no winter coat on the promise of a tepid London approach to winter. I am extremely fashionable, however, because I can seamlessly pull off the sweater/fleece/rain jacket layers paired with spandex from 7th grade and clunky hiking boots. I am fond of topping off (quite literally) this metropolitan getup with a headful of no less than 7 pounds of wind-tossed fluffy hair. Naturally people have begun to mimic my style here. Nothing like imposing a bit of well-deserved cultural imperialism on the motherland!

6. Today was the third day of classes, and at the risk of sounding suck-uppy, I must say that I have never felt more invigorated at the beginning of an Oberlin semester. My program peers are all fiercely intelligent, the professor is marvelous, and the material (thus far) promises to be engaging and provocative. And of course, the context of these studies is an infinite trove of adventure and history and culture. I can only hope to be worthy of this great opportunity to study here.

7. Oops, I'm not! I am struggling desperately with my desire to imitate British accents. It may be crippling my social skills. I cannot listen to a British person speak (hm, my history professor, for example) without biting my tongue so as not to say back to them exactly what they just said to me. On our history walking tour today, I found myself acting like a shy person (which I have not really been for a few years now, if ever) around our professor because I KNEW that I would start mirroring her speech. I am either going to have to find a healthy outlet for this (screaming "crumpet" over and over into a pillow every night) or locate some kind of accent support group here. I don't know how much longer I can hold out on this powerful impulse.

A week into the program, there are no doubts in my mind about whether or not it was the right choice for me to come on this program--it is absolutely and without question where I belong right now. But someone I was skyping with last week asked me what I wanted to get out of this time here in London. And I did give him a few answers--have a good academic semester, become more independent and confident when travelling, go to many of London's fantastic museums. And I do not think these are silly answers, lies, or paltry reasons to be here. But I am not sure if I have even thought about why I have come to London, not sure if I have considered what I REALLY want to do here. I have been answering people's questions about my abroad time thus for the past year: "Yeah, I am going to London. Oh, I know, I am really excited. LONDON, you know? It's gonna be so cool." Pretty easy response to shell out to people. After being here only a week, however, I have begun to realize that this kind of generic compulsory appreciation of London's "coolness" paired with the somewhat passive expectation that the city will somehow enact change and excitement upon me without me really having to push my own boundaries is not the right approach. I am, therefore, determined to begin embracing a spirit of adventure and exploration and curiosity in order to find my way in this grand city in order to figure out why I have come here and what I want to have in my memories when I look back on these three months in the future.

First adventure? It's time to find a football team, chums.