Part Three: I Eat Some Stuff

All right, confession time: before I got over here, one of my biggest concerns of being several thousand miles away from home was not culture shock, classes, homesickness, or deportation: it was the food.  England has a universal reputation for having bad food.  Not just bad food, but terrifying food, the stuff of legend, the stuff that Stephen King would write about if he were making a cookbook.  Or something.

People offered to send me provisions.  My grandparents, in particular, declared that they were in the process of locating packets of peanut butter to send to me.  To which I thought:

1.  I don't even like peanut butter. 
2. What kind of a place is this that I need to take dry provisions?
3.  Why does peanut butter come in packets?

I don't understand.

Horror stories abounded.  By the time I stepped on the plane, I was left with the vague idea that I would be stuck at a pub every night getting a biology lesson via the fish and chips, or making a lot of instant pasta.  And the first week, I did cook for myself, convinced that I was fending for myself in a hostile environment.  I marvelled in passing what kinds of things I saw in the aisles of Sainsburies.

However, although I did spend an inapropriate amount of time in the confit aisle trying to figure out what was happening, I obviously did not go on eating pasta and chicken and potatoes every single night, or else I wouldn't have chosen to write about it--I would have chosen something else, like how it's hard not to smile when you're riding the top level of a double-decker bus or that the squirrels here don't have rabies and you can hand-feed them. 

I have to credit my bosses and coworkers for finally breaking me out of my food phobia.  Not only does the entire company (all four of us) go downstairs for coffee at an Italian bar every day, but the youngest employee after me, who is 26, is something of a food guru.  Or so he claims.

On the third day on the job, we had this conversation:

I haven't drawn a non-caffeinated breath since.  Then, we tried a Vietnamese restaurant.  From then on, I was hooked.  Since then, we've done Korean, Greek, Indian, and Italian (which the boss maintains is hard to come by "authentic"--he's from Italy, so I guess he would know). 

And oh, how the tables have turned. It feels like everything I try here is the best meal I've had, ever. I've been to a restarant that has "press for champagne" buttons on the wall. I've had a scone that made me feel like every pastry before that one was a crime of existence and calories.  The bacon here is so good that it makes me fall to the floor weeping.  I've tried buffalo mozarella, goat cheese, chili pepper fudge, banana bread beer, strawberry beer, crumpets, an absurd amount of tea. 

Last Saturday, we got several kinds of fruit I had never seen or heard of and we made a game out of trying them in succession before looking up how to actually eat them.  Fact: most things that appear to have an inedible outside, actually have an inedible outside.  Also, if it looks like a pit, it's a pit.  Not a tiny bonus fruit inside of the first one.

Of course, this doesn't change a thing about my picky eater status--if anything, it's just a testament to how much is delicious here if even I can find things to eat.  For everything I've fallen in love with, there's also something that I still can't bring myself to touch with a ten-foot pole.  For example, the Harrods meat room (yes, it has one, although I'm sure it has a nicer name than Harrods Meat Room) has every meat imaginable, from veal to venison, and also several which I cannot pronounce and appear to be from a Dr. Seuss book.

 As far as cat, I'm not a fan.  I do not like it, Sam I Am.



Hopefully though, as my time here continues, I'll get a little bit more adventurous with my food choices.  For now, I may not need peanut butter packets, but I'm satisfied taking my crumpets with preserves. Hold the duck compote. 

Part Two: Language Barriers

So, another week down in the big city.  They say that living abroad tends to lead to culture shock, particularly if you go to a new country that requires that you get used to not only their culture and customs but a new language as well. I assumed that going into an English-speaking country with a 20-year background in--you know, English--would save me from a lot of that.  It's too bad that I forgot that the Irony Fairy loves this kind of situation.

My internship, located above a men's salon (Ted's Grooming Room), consists entirely of four employees plus me.  They are all wonderful and well-traveled individuals who each speak a minimum of two languages fluently.  Two are Italian, and all of them speak Spanish.  What this means is that both get tossed around the office pretty frequently, but they found out that I'm a Spanish minor this week but can't speak it at all, so they've been trying to help me out by speaking Spanish to me on breaks as little mini-exercises.  We get coffee from the cafe downstairs, and the owners are from South America.  They, being good sports, also speak Spanish to me.  This means that, in my decision to go to the UK and not Spain for the added bonus of knowing the language ahead of time, I merely made the Irony Fairy throw back his head in laughter before placing me in an entirely Spanish-speaking workplace.  I get to practice more speaking every day than in the last four years of Spanish class.

 I do not yet know how to say, "you guys mostly I do not understand any of what you are saying and cannot respond," but that is moving closer to the top of my priority list daily.

I smile and nod a lot.

  Similar: I discovered on Friday, the first day of my informatics class that the term "informatics" here and in the states mean two very different things. I was nervous ahead of time because Informatics is a discipline that is still small enough that the community is international, and you will occasionally pull the teacher who has English as a recent second language and this can create some communication problems.  My professor was incredibly well spoken and I was relieved--and then the Irony Fairy reared its ugly head.  We got down to the subject matter.

Our first exercise was to write three boolean functions that would complete the network as indicated.  Boolean functions? Math?  What kind of a place is this?  I had no idea what he was talking about and it became very clear very fast that every other student in the room did.  I sat for fifty minutes trying to look busy with my "boolean functions" (mostly meaningless algebraic scribbles, plus a kitty) before walking out at the end completely horrified.

My view is that if I had wanted a mathematically intense discipline I would have gone for a CS degree, but it occurred to me afterward that this University only has an Informatics department.  Informatics IS computer science here.  Informatics is CS?  Oh, how simple one-word terminology differences can lead to terrible mistakes.  Kind of like how you should never, ever call anyone or anything over here "fancy pants."

On a lighter note, thanks to that class conflicting with a scheduled trip outside of London, I'm the only one at my flat this weekend.  If the language barriers weren't exciting enough, I still am noticing culture shock in unusual places.

I went to Harrod's today, and everything was so expensive and beautiful that I just wandered aimlessly from room to room, agog, like a total hillbilly.  This is basically how my day went:

But mister, where I'm from, we don't have no shoes made from chocolate...you're lucky if you're shoes ain't made out of dirt and newspaper clippings!

So many surprises in small places.  It's funny to think that most of the culture gaps I'm overcoming were gaps unseen.  I guess though, that's really how most things in life work.  I guess the Irony Fairy wouldn't have it any other way.

Nope.

Part One: I have an accent now

Today, as I was mashing my face between the bars at Buckingham Palace to get a look at a guard (who was doing absolutely nothing of note except wearing a really excellent hat) I realized that after a week here in London, I still feel fresh off the plane--and I'm loving every minute of it.  I don't think I've been this clueless, confused and deliriously excited since my fourth birthday at Chuck-e-Cheese.   

Living in a foreign country? Just saw the ball bit?  Who knows?

Every day is a game-changer regarding how I understand myself.  My American accent comes with a lot of baggage, both good and bad.  I've never been in a place where just opening my mouth is enough to trigger a whole world of predispositions about me.  The very first day I was here, someone stopped me at the airport tube to ask directions, but as soon as they heard me speak, just kept walking.  I realized--I have an accent now!

  I've been asked if I'm Canadian, I've been asked if I'm a Texan, I've been asked if back in the States I rode a horse and could twirl a lasso.  Or maybe it was if I could ride a lasso and twirl a horse.  The guy was pretty drunk.

But the weirdest thing of all is not that I feel different, it's that I AM different. All of these phrases apply to me now--

Elaine, the urban intern.
Elaine, the one with the accent.
Elaine, the pub-crawler.
Elaine, the one who can't make correct change.

In the past week I've started my internship--which is renting a room above a men's salon, because I am the fourth employee.  I've seen the British Museum, parliament, Big Ben, my first gyro shop, my first pub, navigated my first tube and bus, started cooking again, been inside my first London fashion store, flats, high rises, pharmacies, grocers, walked more than I think I have in the past month combined.

This first week has been full of tiny triumphs and losses.  For example, I have not yet gotten lost in the public transit, and my fear of having to stake out a new life lost within the bowels of the London tube system appears to be unfounded.  For one thing, it's not as hard as I thought it would be.  Everything is color coded. However, if I were to sum up public transit in one sensation, it would be the feeling of being in the way.  If you are not moving as fast or as with as much intention as the person behind you, they will push you out of the way.  A nine-year-old French girl shoved me out of the train when I wasn't moving fast enough for her.    

But maybe I'm painting a bad picture of the tube.  It's incredible, and after 11 pm on a weekend, when you'd think would be the shadiest, most uncomfortable time, it's the opposite--everyone is going out to a party and if they're young enough not to be jaded about talking to strangers on the tube, they'll strike up the best conversations.

Met two guys on Saturday that were going to a Fancy Dress party.  Not what it sounds like.

In the past week, I've been Elaine the tourist, Elaine the American who is way too excited about riding the tube right now, Elaine the one who still cannot make change even after the third try.

On Friday, someone stopped and asked for directions and I knew what to tell them.  On Saturday I led a group of people in my flat to the British Museum.  On Sunday, I finally made correct change.

And tonight I feel like Elaine, who is slowly learning how to do this.  Maybe I'll even be ready to start work tomorrow.