America: There and Back Again

After an incredibly long and relaxing break in America over the holidays, I returned to the old country to continue my academic advancement, aka self-impose confidence torture and paranoia-inducing sleep deprivation. Floating between countries as I have now for the past two years, I can’t help but make comparisons between the culture I’m presently trying to blend with and the one I most recently left behind.

I’ll be the first to admit that when I’m home in Ohio, I am spoilt rotten. Imagine Snow White’s cabin just without the chore-addicted woodland creatures and with a foot of snow, and the picture describes my month long hiatus from anything remotely unpleasant. I sat by the fire and had the option of staying sitting there all day with only occasionally wondering twenty feet into the kitchen to steal from the array of cookies my mom was constantly baking. A little more effort is required in London. Fourteen flights of stairs: that is the average amount I climb each day between the library, the subway, my apartment, and the school.

The Ohio countryside is enveloped with blissful silence. Even my family’s old Labrador has given up any pretence of scaring away shadows and instead of barking spends his days and evenings rotating from lounging in his bed to lounging in front of the fire. London is in a constant state of construction. Supposedly, the architecture is beautiful but since half of the buildings are covered in scaffolding, I can’t know for sure.

Even after dodging the wrecking balls and demonically loud chainsaws, I still have to negotiate the labyrinth/horizontal catacombs of King’s College, where on multiple occasions I have gotten locked in classrooms and computer labs. I half expect the Minotaur to lunge at me from behind one of the deer-path wide corridors by the Philosophy Department. In fact, after spending years in complex, abstract thought, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the philosophy professors actually morphed into the Minotaur like an academic Gollum.

In America, proportions typically run in supersize or extra supersize. I can skip down the street twirling and waving my arms around and never interfere with the slightly befuddled other pedestrians for the most part. Even cities like New York are nothing like Oxford Circus, where no standard foot traffic direction is followed. Yesterday I felt like the average peewee football player staring down the field at charging Pro-bowlers as impatient shoppers speed-walked in wall formation towards me.

Instead of having time to catch up on creative writing and nonfiction like in Ohio, in London, I am falling behind on heavy reading because I’m too busy reading.

Instead of eating hot, homemade comfort food, I have sandwiches smeared with butter.

Instead of ploughing through mountains of snow, I’m fighting off the constant British drizzle.

Even though I routinely have to hike up endless flights of stairs in light rain while dragging my weight in books I should have already read as I'm dodging Mr. Hyde professors, I’m still glad to be back in London. It’s where I’m becoming the person that I’m supposed to be. Besides, the gossip in the daily Tube papers is SO much better than their counterparts in the States. Did you get a picture documenting the company and exact time Emma Watson went home last night? I don’t think so.