Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About My Life...But Were Afraid To Ask

Introduction

I've spent the past two nights writing this, so if it takes you a while to read don't fret. Or don't even read it all. Just look at the headings and decide if the paragraphs sound intriguing.

As usual, I've gone a bit overboard on writing (plus it's Tuesday and I would like to write every Sunday), so I'm going to let you at it and continue where I left off this upcoming weekend. Enjoy!


The Location

I'm working at King's College in London, which is south of the Thames in the South Bank area. Where I work is right next to the Royal National Theatre, where I'll be seeing Kenneth Branagh perform in October (more on that later), and Waterloo Bridge. When I walk across the bridge, to my left stretches the fabulous London skyline, the old buildings crowding along the Thames, vying for attention. The modern London Eye is balanced by the glorious old towers of Parliament and Big Ben on the other shore, with the silver streamers of wire that hold the pedestrian walkway of the Hungerford Bridge stretching out before. I fear my description doesn't do it justice, nor will telling you that my breath gets taken away each time I see it.


The Office

My official title at work is "Assistant Study Abroad & Exchanges Officer," which means I help coordinate students directly studying abroad and those on exchanges, from colleges where King's Students also go to study. When I first walked in to the office I was taken aback--it's a huge room where seven people work, with all of their messy desks and shelves catching your eye as you walk in. Of course, organized me has made it my mission to have a spectacularly spic-and-span workingspace!

I didn't realise when I accepted the job what a prestigious school King's is until I started learning the application process. Basically, we only accept students with straight A's and B's from Ivy League calibre schools. Harvard. Cornell. Stanford. Pre-meds, bio majors...and it's impossible to get into the History programme with less than a 3.5 GPA. King's is one of the best schools in the country for History, as well as War Studies (the only one in the country), and has one of the top three Law Schools in the U.K. We trail below Oxford and Cambridge, and sometimes Imperial College--but that's it. So we're allowed--nay, encouraged--to be rather ruthless with the application process. As Jim put it: we do people a favour by turning them down, because there's no way they would be able to keep up. I'm a bit nervous, though. Here I am, a farm girl from Illinois, only a couple of years older than the students arriving, and I'm supposed to know how to deal with snobby, silver-spoon fed, Ivy-League-attending East Coast kids? My only consolation is that I know a heck of a lot more about living in the U.K. than someone just arriving.

Jim Lusted was the person who filled the position before me, and whom is now going on to get his Master's degree in Race & Ethnic Studies. I adored having him around to show me the way around the computer (I register all of the students for their classes) and around his filing system, and enjoyed having him around in general. Classic self-deprecating wit, a la Hugh Grant's earlier roles. Everyone else in the office is nice and I'm starting to engage with them more, but they're all a bit older--everyone's in their 30s or late 20s. A far cry from the Study Abroad Office!

Because of Jim's departure, we all went out as an office for dinner on Thursday and for drinks on Friday, which was great fun. I naively asked on Friday as we were leaving work if we'd be eating dinner, and everyone laughed at me. "We're English!" they cried, "We don't need to eat, we just drink!" All well and good for someone who's been drinking longer than I've been alive, but not for me. When I next went out drinking I made sure to eat dinner first, and will continue to do so. Wine hangovers are no fun, let me tell you.

Everyone in the office has quite an international flair: Jo studied in Italy for three years and has a Sicilian girlfriend; Rachel studied French and goes to the Caribbean regularly to coordinate programmes there; Julie majored in Scandanavian studies; Tim is German but has lived in the U.K. for 12 years and has a British accent; Claire is also dating a Sicilian and led tours around the Continent; Peternell lived abroad for a bit; Emma has a French-Arab husband she met in France; and Deb is Canadian. She's the director and used to work for Sony--was one of three people who signed Charlotte Church, and helped market Celine Dion. When I first me her I said, "What part of the States are you from?" "I'm from Toronto," she barked. (Ooops!) I tried to appease: "I spent the weekend in Montreal and about three weeks in Newfoundland." "Why would you want to go there?" she said disdainfully. (Interestingly enough, when I went swing dancing I had the identical conversation with another Torontonian. From now on I'm hedging my bets and just asking what part of North America they're from.)


The Posh Flat

"I live in Kensington, dahling." To those who know London this remark is always responded to with "A bit posh, innit?" Indeed, Kensington is a bit posh. I literally live down the street from Christie's auction house and a Lamborghini dealership. 10 minutes' walk down the road are the Natural History Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Royal Albert Hall, where Sunday night I attended the Proms.

I really lucked out on the flat--heard about it through a guy at the UofI and with encouragement from my co-workers (who are all green with envy), I immediately signed upon seeing it on Friday. I'm quite pleased with it. Not only is it in a posh neighbourhood (which is therefore quite safe to walk around at night), it's between two cute downtown-style streets with everything from coffeeshops to drycleaners to pubs. Tons of rich, trendy foreigners walk about, making me feel a bit of a poseur. I'm not rich! But no one need know that I only pay £105/wk for a flat complete with a study room, a living room, a large kitchen, and two full baths. And I know I shouldn't really get excited about this, but I was pleasantly surprised to find sheets and pillows, an iron and ironing board, dishes, pots and pans, a microwave, a toaster--and three refrigerators and freezers! All this for four people. Plus we have ethernet, which affords me the opportunity to write all of this, and television, to watch while writing. In the U.K. everyone who has a telly has to buy a licence--over £100 a year. If you don't pay the government will fine you thousands of pounds, and you can't even buy a TV without proving you have a licence. It doesn't matter if you don't even watch the BBC--because it's broadcast and you could watch it, you must pay. Seems a bit stupid for someone coming from the tradition of PBS! Anyway, it might seem a bit expensive for someone living in Illinois (or Wales, for that matter), but as far as London goes it's incredibly cheap. Besides which, it's in Zone 1 of the Tube, which will drastically save on travel expenses. For someone like my friend Stuart in Zone 6, getting travelcards can cost over £1,000 a year. Shocking.


The Flatmates

I'm renting from Boston University, which has extra housing for programmes it runs for its students. Most of the people in my building are taking classes at LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts) or the Royal College of Music, which is the case with two of my flatmates, namely Elizabeth and Brenna. Elizabeth is 35, from Maine, and is an "actor." (It irkes me when females say they're actors.) She's quite excited about theatre in general and has quite a bit of stage work under her belt. The singer in the flat is 26-year-old Brenna, who's from Seattle but has worked in the library at Harvard the past three years and done gigging around Boston. She's studied in Britain before and has several friends in the music biz--can't wait for her to get some gigs so I can see her perform. The youngest in the flat is Meredith, who's in her senior year of university in Virginia and is doing a three-month internship. She's never left North America before, and I've been giving her tips on Britain. I told her what squash is, introduced her to Jaffa Cakes, explained digestive biscuits' deliciousness--all the important things. Which brings me to:


The Culture Shock

Or rather, lack thereof. Yup. Don't have any. After 10 months of living in Britain, I'm not feeling cocky so much as confident. I know what all the slang means. I know what my coworkers are referring to when they talk about SIM cards or tell me to go to Argos. I've almost effortlessly slipped in to calling sidewalks "pavement," pants "trousers," and WhiteOut "Tipex." I'm actually surprised by the things I remember--that last one came out of nowhere today at work. I absolutely love being here again. It's the little things that I've forgotten that bring so much happiness--for instance, I got an absurdly large grin on my face in the supermarket (never "grocery store") when I saw crusty bread for sale. Ahhh, good old crusty bread! And the cheese! I can choose from Cheshire, Wesleydale, Caerphilly, Davidstow, West Country, Canadian, Lancashire, Double Gloucester. I went with the Wexlow Irish cheddar this week. I'm happy here, and while I wish I had more friends in the city to hang out with, London is such a rich resource of things to do that I'll never be bored. Besides, it's not as if I don't have friends close by. Plus my flatmates all seem really cool and up for exploring the city. I'm much better able to handle living here than I was my junior year of college. For one thing, I've done it before. Another, I'm more mature, and I'm not so concerned with gaining the adulation of my flatmates and acquaintances. I'm much more self-sufficient and capable of getting around by myself and not being lonely, and of making new friends or acquaintance-friends. I think I'll do well here.


The Itinerary

It took a few days to get over jet lag, but by Wednesday I was ready to go out, and had my first night swing dancing. It was a definite change of scene from what I'm used to (many more old men and guys blatantly hitting on me), but was fun enough I'll go back soon. Thursday I went for dinner with my coworkers, and Friday out for drinks for Jim's goodbye.

Saturday I met my friend Spencer (whom I did theatre with at the UofI), which was a blast. He's been working here for three months and knows the city better than I do. We met in front of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square--it feels surreal to be saying that--and headed to Leicester Square and Chinatown for dinner, followed by a visit to the White Horse Pub in honour of Champaign's bar of the same name. We struck up conversation with an out-of-work actor and his barkeeper friend, plus the manager of the pub, and were treated to a taste test between lager and bitter, and different ciders. After a snack of chips'n'cheese'n'mayonnaise, it was time to head home, happy in the knowledge that I have at least one friend here in the big city.

Sunday was my cultural day--I went to the Imperial War Museum to scout it out in preparation for my parents' visit in December. My dad, a history and war buff, would enjoy looking at the tanks and missiles. I, however, became naseous when I went in the WWI model trench and imagined myself on the Western Front. By the time I went through the horrors of WWII and the slightly cheesy, yet still meaningful Blitz Experience, I was numb to the emotional ravages of the extremely well researched Holocaust Exhibit. It was eye-opening to see the origins of the anti-Semitism in Germany. It didn't spring up overnight, but rather was fostered over several decades of "scientific" research and publications taught to schoolchildren. When you're a kid reading about the lower life forms that are Jews, it makes it that much easier to accept the over 2,000 laws stripping them of their rights. But oh, how horrible it was to see the pictures and read the stories of some of those killed--people with depression, with mental retardation. And the children! How someone could shoot a three-year-old in the head is absolutely inconceivable except for the fact that genocide still goes on in modern times--witness Bosnia.

Sobered, I walked up to the Globe Theatre and towards the Tate Modern (which I plan to visit more for its immense space than the modern art inside), and across the new Millennium Bridge towards St. Paul's Cathedral. Turning down Fleet Street, I spied the beautiful spire of St. Bride's, another church designed by Sir Christopher Wren, which was the model for the first tiered wedding cake. Then on to the Strand, past the oldest tea shop in the world (Twinings) and the Royal Courts of Justice, and along the river again to the Tube station. And then it was back to Kensington and up to the Royal Albert Hall for a night of Stravinsky's "Oedipus" at the Proms, the tradition of classical concerts that have been running for 109 years.

Can you now see why I love London?