Mind the Gap: A Phrase with Particularly Significant Meaning for Me

It’s official: London is starting to feel like home.

It could be because my life is more settled: my bags are wholly unpacked, my classes (and homework) have begun, and I can easily navigate the Tube and (!!!) direct other tourists in the right direction. But another reason I feel at home here, and I think one of the big reasons, is that I’ve acquired a nickname.

It’s not a completely original nickname; really, it began when my mom’s good friend Lynn recognized my mother’s facial features as not fat, but simply big. And she was spot on: my mom’s cheekbones are high, forehead not abnormally but proportionally wide, with full cheeks and deep dimples. I’ve inherited the same BigFace (minus the high cheekbones) and have embraced it. (My friends at home recognize my BigFace jokes—at least I hope—as sort of a point of pride. But I think my new friends here, when I joke about my BigFace, think that I’m being unconfident and continue to reassure that it’s “not really that big.” Note: It is that big, and I’ve come to actually love it.) Anyway, very late the other night, when I was hanging out with my hallmate Darren and his friend Gavin, I happened to affectionately refer to my BigFace. Gavin, a charming and completely un-PC Brit (Christina can attest to that), jumped on it. “BigFace? I think it rather looks like a moon! MoonFace!” And there it was.

I’ve always loved nicknames and found that if someone calls you a nickname, 99% of the time, they do it because they like you. With that very drunkenly-assigned moniker, my friendship with my British flatmates was made official.

The friendliness of the Brits doesn’t stop with drunken nicknaming. All big cities have some unfriendly residents, but as with New York (which I think gets a bad rap—I very rarely encountered unfriendly New Yorkers) Londoners are generally a helpful and friendly bunch. I was reminded of that today at Baker Street station: I was a few steps from an escalator when a pale bespectacled fellow stepped in front of me to get on, and his friend, a late twenty-something man in a turban, stepped to follow him. The turbaned guy looked back at me and apologized; I smiled and said it was fine.

London Twenty-Something: “Hi!”
Me: “uh…Hi!” (You can take the girl out of the Midwest, but you can’t really take the Midwest out of the girl…and so I smile rather widely.)
LTS: “You have a gap in your teeth!” (Turns to friend.) “She’s got a gap in her teeth!” He then grins and shows off the space between his own two front teeth. “It’s a blessing from God, I always say.” (Points upward.)
(LTS’s friend laughs and embarrassingly shushes him; I laugh and agree that yes, it’s lucky.)
LTS: “And you’re American, too!”
Me: “I certainly am, my friend.”
LTS: “Glorious. A beautiful American with a gap tooth.” (Reading this, it may sound creepy, but there were absolutely zero creeper vibes. He was just genuinely thrilled to be chatting.)
LTS: “What is your name?”
Me: “Kate. What is yours?”
LTS: “Dean.” (We reach end of escalator.) “It’s lovely to meet you, Kate. Please enjoy your stay in London. And keep smiling!

I did keep smiling, all the way to Lambeth North, because of that guy’s cheerfulness. I had great reason to smile, because before that encounter at the Tube stop, I’d had a pretty great day. Thursday mornings require an early start, because I have a 9 a.m. class in central London, and it’s a 30-minute Tube ride from home. But my class, Art and Society, is well worth it: it focuses on, well, art and its impact of London society. It’s fascinating because each week we go to a different place of art or architechture and discuss its cultural impact of London’s development. Today was our day to go to one of my favorite London icons: St. Paul’s Cathedral. Christina and I attended mass there when she visited, but we hadn’t been keen on paying the hefty entrance fee for access to the entire grounds. But today we got it, and 500+ steps later, Lisa and I were standing at the very top of the cathedral. As in, the golden cross on top was maybe 30 feet above our heads. The view of the city was astounding—not beautiful, exactly, because London on gray hazy days isn’t necessarily pretty. But certainly it was awesome, in the original sense of the word. We stayed there, on top of the world, for at least a half hour, and the view and feeling that came with it could’ve made me stay months there. (It also didn’t hurt that a handsome, youngish British teacher was leading his class of 5-year-olds around the top… I loudly commented to Lisa: “That is mighty ballsy of this guy to take children up here. I respect that.” He laughed. At least being American provides a bit of an excuse for loudly proclaiming kinda-inappropriate things.)

After winter winds forced us back downstairs, I ran errands in the city (only looked at my map once!), then headed to the Imperial War Museum on Lambeth Road…it was really amazing, and I’m sure I’ll go back to spend more time there. London’s wealth of free museums is easily one of its greatest attributes, making it easy to enjoy parts of a museum for a couple hours and not feel guilty that you haven’t gotten your money’s worth. I headed from there to sangria with Lisa and Co. at a Cuban bar (it only went to further my obsession with Cuba…stupid outdated travel ban), then to a Thai restaurant, then to the Tube for the long-ish journey home. During that ride, I didn’t run into any friendly locals with a gap in their teeth, but the memory was enough to keep me showing mine all the way home.

The tale of a week, two weeks too late

Let me begin by saying that I don’t know how Perez Hilton and the millions of other daily bloggers have lives outside cyberspace. (I guess it’s easier to blog about other people’s lives, because writing about your own requires that you actually do something yourself first…but now is not the time to launch into my anti-Perez rant.) I haven’t blogged in a couple of weeks, but I’m going to try to catch up now.

Christina arrived last Monday to visit before she headed to Spainfor her own study abroad, and we celebrated our reunion with a meal of bread, cheese and wine. (Luckily for our tastebuds but unfortunately for at least my waistline, we continued this food trend throughout her stay.) We started off her visit by hanging out in the kitchen with my flatmates Freddie, Hannah and Daniel, as well as a couple of their friends. (We played ‘fuzzy duck’, a drinking game where the participants go round in a circle and, depending on various factors, say either ‘fuzzy duck’ or ‘ducky fuzz’, but never ‘fucky duzz’. I was not particularly good at this game.) Over the course of the week, we completed (another) scavenger hunt (this time for my other orientation) and met Hanneke (a Dutch girl whose hometown is Groningen, the city in which Sas and Ing go to university) and Marielene, who is German. We went to a pub after the scavenger hunt for drinks; I’m loving more and more how it’s acceptable to begin drinking at any time of day.

University of Westminster threw a party for study abroad students on the Dutch Master, a boat that sailed up and down the Thames. One of the girls on my scavenger hunt wasn’t planning on going to the party, so she gave Christina her ticket. Drinks were exorbitantly priced on the boat, and the weather was rainy, but dancing, meeting new people, and making fun of the 60-something on-boat DJ made the three hour party entertaining. Once we docked, a few of us grabbed the Tube to the New Globe (a bar near the Queen Mary campus where some of my Arcadia friends go) and…well, Christina tried to dance on one of the tables, so that tells you what kind of night it was. We chatted up Brits (one of whom looked like a lumberjack; I asked if he would make me pancakes.) Despite a few frantic moments where I thought we’d lost Christina, it was a successful evening.

The next day, we dragged ourselves to Portobello Road Market (in the Notting Hill area) to meet Marielene and Hanneke’s friend Frenci. (Hanneke was planning to come too, but was unfortunately sick.) Although Saturday is the market’s biggest day, there were still stalls upon stalls of vintage clothes, jewelry, food, shoes, fabric, books and more. We bought only food (as usual) and checked out blocks-worth of goods.

The rest of that weekend, we visited more landmarks, took a highly discussed series of O-H-I-O pictures, went out with my flatmates, and, on Christina’s last day, finally had fish and chips. (We got them near Covent Garden at a place called Rock and Sole , which sells the traditional greasy fish and chips and mushy peas…seriously, what is not to love about that menu?)

On Tuesday afternoon, Christina and her massive backpack left for Spain, where she’s spending time with her uncle before her study begins. (It’s crazy to think that her program hasn’t even started, while I feel like I’ve been here ages—in a really good way.)

I’ve got to run to meet people for the Circle Line Pub Crawl (27 subway stops, 27 pubs; but don't worry, Mom, I'm sharing a half pint at each stop.) I’ll report on how that goes once I’ve recovered. Until then, cheerio!

Woking, Windsor, and some weally weird breakfast spread

The last few days have been a bit of a blur: we’ve been to the pub several nights (but with pints at 3.50£ each, we more just play snooker [Britain’s version of billiards] and nurse our one drink the whole night.) I really love the atmosphere of going-out in Britain because it’s generally more laid-back; pub patrons drink, certainly, but don’t seem to share the American college goal of drinking solely to get trashed. Instead, they play snooker, shoot darts, and watch football. (The other day when we went into a pub down the street from our hotel, the first thing I heard was a Brit’s reaction to a poor pass in a game he was watching in TV. “Fucking wankers!” So quaint.) Also, the expectations of what to wear when going out are rather different. In America, girls often put on tight/short/somewhat slutty outfits before going out for the night; here, ladies just wear cardigans and T-shirts (to the pubs, at least; the dress code is certainly different for clubs, which are obviously also popular in London and which I haven’t been to yet.)

On Friday, we checked out of our hotel and headed to Woking for a weekend homestay in order to experience a “real British home.” We’d been informed earlier this week whose home we’d been assigned to, and I (as well as two girls in my program, Lisa and Kim) was assigned to stay with a woman named Jenny Smith. The biography form said that Jenny had several grown children and one cat, and that she worked as a hairdresser. We imagined her as a cool, hip, late forty-something woman with a penchant for torn jeans and chunky highlights. (I’d been planning to nonchalantly mention how grown-out my bangs were in hopes of a free trim.) But when we arrived at the bus station in Woking (a town about an hour and a half outside London,) there was no one resembling our imagined Jenny. The real, sixty-something Jenny is quite short and rather rotund, with gray hair and a thick London accent. To me, she looks a bit like Winston Churchill in a wig, but then again, many older Brits remind me of Churchill. Jenny is quite friendly, and is quick to tell about her vast travel experiences, including trips to Singapore, Iceland, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada.

On Saturday, we headed for Windsor Castle, the residence where Her Majesty the Queen lives for about a month out of the year. Windsor is absolutely beautiful: the castle itself rests on the top of a hill, and the town sits around the hill and is full of quaint shops. We began by taking the tour of the grounds as our guide Colin (a good old Englishman) told us about the castle.

Windsor Castle was one of 11 (if I recall correctly) fortresses that William the Conqueror erected to defend against the English after he defeated them in 1066’s Battle of Hastings. Of the castles William the Conqueror built, only two remain: Windsor,and the Tower of London. The view from the castle is astonishing, since the rest of the surrounding landscape is flat. You can see for miles and miles; within view is Eton College(the high school that Princes William and Harry and PM David Cameron attended) and the River Thames. It was really amazing to be standing in the same room that Henry VIII, Edward the Black Prince of Wales, and countless other royals once stood.

After the castle tour, we went into the village to eat and look at shops. Soon enough, we were headed back to Woking for the night…which leads me to a sidecomment.

English food gets a bad wrap, but while I would never assert that it’s the tastiest thing I’ve eaten, it isn’t so awful. Jenny Smith cooked several meals for us, and meat (sausages a couple times) and potatoes (both regular and sweet) were staples. Breakfast was mostly tea, cereal and toast. But along with the usual toast toppings of jam and peanut butter, the English also often eat their toast with marmite, a thick, dark spread that’s made from yeast extract (and is, according to Wikipedia, a by-product of beer brewing.) Some Americans I met made the unfortunate mistake of spreading the marmite on their toast like they would jam; marmite is very intensely salty and tastes kind of like congealed soy sauce, so it should be only minimally dotted onto toast. I liked it, but according to Jenny, it’s something people either love or they hate.

Anyway, today we headed back to London, and I am now settled and sitting in my room. I’ve met and befriended my flatmates; they’re all British—yahoo! Christina is coming in tomorrow to see the town, and Westminster orientation is also this week. As part of our orientation, we are going on a boat ride on Thursday down the Thames. (!!!!!) Until then, cheers!

Londontown, Day 1 (and a bit more)

Today was my first full day in London, and it was, at the risk of sounding like a wannabe, jolly feckin’ good. But bear with me; I’m going to recap the first few days of the trip before moving on to London:

I started out on Dec. 29th, meeting Christina (who is literally my lifelong friend, in the very off-chance you’ve never heard me talk about her) at a very crowded Newark airport. We flew overnight to Frankfurt and headed to Amsterdam from there, where Ing and Sas met us at the airport. With our typical innuendo-laced brand of humor, the four of us made our way to Stadskanaal, where Ing and Sas live. Julia/Hulio, who came with Sas over the summer to the States, met us there. Over the next four days, we visited Prisca’s (Ing’s and Sas’s mom) soap and lotion shop, ate oliebollen and appelflappen (two traditional Dutch New Years treats), enjoyed a party with the Karsches and their extended family, watched some glorious fireworks in the streets—and, yes, we also partook of some legal (and, I might add, kind of strong) Dutch goodies. (For a more complete and informative summary of the first few days in Holland, check out Christina’s blog here) Being with four of my best friends was the absolute best way to start the trip, although it made my departure Sunday night a little rough. The girls took me to the train station in Assen, where Hulio met me, and we made our way to her hometown of Haarlem, a suburb of Amsterdam. I certainly want to spend more time in Haarlem when I can, because it’s really beautiful (as is much of Holland, my adopted homeland.) Hulio’s parents are really sweet people, and we discussed topics ranging like the American vs. Dutch education system, Four Lokos, and the fact that “that’s what s/he said” jokes just don’t work in Dutch. They kindly let me crash at their place, and Hulio’s dad took us to Schiphol in the morning so I could catch my flight to London and so Hul could head back to Groningen.

The flight to London and my arrival at Heathrow were uneventful. As I was heading to find the Arcadia representative who was supposed to be waiting for us (but wasn’t), I met Lizzie, a Mount Holyoke student who grew up in Brooklyn and whose mom, it turns out, grew up in Mansfield, Ohio. We rode the Heathrow express to Paddington station and grabbed a cab from there to the hotel. (Fun fact: Cabdrivers in London have to study for 2-3 years and must pass a test called “the Knowledge” in order to become a licensed cab driver—they literally know every street in the city and take great pride in their jobs.)

We began orientation Monday afternoon, and there I met several girls who I went to a pub with for dinner. (First fish and chip bowl so far-- whaddup London!)

Tuesday, after several hours of orientation/introduction with the Arcadia staff, we embarked on a scavenger hunt throughout the city. What was initially a group of three girls morphed to six, then 10 when we ran into four Arcadia students we kind of knew at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Our posse of ten (several kids from New York City and others from Jersey, L.A, Boston, Virginia, and Bulgaria) roamed the city looking for the scavenger hunt clues, which led us from St. Paul’s to Covent Garden, Charing Cross/Trafalgar Square, Westminster/Parliament and finally ended up in South Kensington, where we met the rest of the Arcadia group for dinner at Imperial College of London. It was a fantastic way to get to know the other kids, many of whom are going to other schools throughout the city. (I swore not to hang out solely with Americans, but since we’re all eager to meet Brits, I think it’ll become more of a British friend-hunting network.)

When we got back from Kensington (again, with our crew of 10) we headed to a pub, which unfortunately was swarming with Americans, but was also serving some Brits thanks to a ManU game on TV. After a pint and some pool with the scavenger hunt people, and a renewed faith that not all Brits have bad teeth (A message to Tom, the guy in the white V-neck sweater: if you’re reading this, please know that your accent allows you to charm the pants off any American woman who crosses your path) I headed back to the hotel.

Sorry for such a long post—hope you could stand to read it through. I move into my Westminster housing on Friday, so I’ll post about the move later in the week.
Until then, cheers!

'Ello!

Hey, all!
I should’ve done an introduction ages ago, but I figure if you’re reading this, you know me and know that I’m studying in London this semester. A blog is the easiest way to keep everyone updated on my comings and goings, so here we go! I’m going to try to update this every few days, and will include pictures and stories from my trip. I’m off to the pub now (!!!) but I’ll post an update on my trip so far when I get a chance.
Cheers!