One Week Down

The return to Mary Washington is the true test of the side effects of studying abroad. 5 quick points for the week.

- Do not take Italian 101 and 102 with a nine month gap in between.

- American courses are more focused on reviewing material.

- One way streets are not any easier to navigate on a grid system as opposed to whatever way England lays out their roadways.

- While American drivers are more aggressive, they're also more cautious.

- While picking classes back up is fairly easy, re-integrating into social life on campus is a bit more of a process.

Reverse Culture Shock

There comes a time in every blogger's career when they find themselves opening at least one post with the general sentiment "I am a horrible blogger."

Today I join their ranks.

To be fair, it has been over a month since I last posted. I've even been back in the States for an entire week.

Which brings me to a much anticipated discussion of reverse culture shock. Mine actually hasn't been that bad, but I also haven't been out and about a ton.

Being back on the right side of the road didn't phase me a bit--I was convinced I'd look the wrong way while crossing the street and nearly get run over. Actually driving, however, is an adjustment. I already miss being able to walk everywhere.

The money looks fake, although I do appreciate it fitting properly in my wallet. The 20 pound notes always got bent in the strangest ways. What's worse, though, is the feel of the money. Americans must use bills more often and fold their bills more because American cash feels so worn while all the British notes I handled felt crisper.

The accent change hasn't phased me the way I thought it would. In the UK, whenever I met a new person with an American accent, it really weirded me out--I guess I came to expect strangers to be British. Once I was back on this side of the pond, though, it seemed perfectly normal.

There should be plenty more to come, but that covers the basics for now.

Going the Distance

Okay, it's been ages since I last posted which is not okay.

But by waiting all this time, I've ensured that I actually have something to write about. So all's well that ends well?

Ahem.

I spent this past weekend in the south of France. I've been before, but this time it was interesting to see it with the new UK perspective.

Europeans, or at least the British, have an entirely different concept of distance from Americans. I can say "Oh, my college isn't too far from my hometown--it's about an hour and a half's drive" and my English friends look at me like I have three heads. Two hours is a harrowing journey. Most locals here have never even been to Scotland, much less Europe, despite the fact that (in my Yankee eyes) it's so close and inexpensive to visit.

What's more, most people have a totally skewed view of how the United States is set up. When Brits (or most foreign visitors, to tell the truth) come to the U.S., they seem to think they can see Florida, New York and California within the course of the week, not realizing that just because those places are in the same country, it doesn't mean they're near one another.

So that is why my closest Brit friend will always tease me for having seen more of his native country than he's done.

Oxford and Essays

It seems appropriate to actually talk about school at some point or another on this blog. That is, after all, the primary reason I'm in England to begin with. So what better place to avail future ASE students of my academic experience than Oxford?

Arriving at Univ

First, I should explain the collegiate system for those who may be unfamiliar. Oxford University only exists in the loosest sense of the term. Really, Oxford is comprised of 30-odd independent colleges and "Oxford University" is a mere administrative figurehead. The colleges themselves are autonomous and control their own admissions and teaching independently of both each other and the university.

ASE takes a week-long residency at University College, the oldest in the system, being built in 1249. Other colleges include Christ Church, Trinity, St. John's, Magdalen (pronounced like "maudlin") and Queens.

The Great Hall at Christ Church, of Harry Potter fame

While at Oxford, we continue our classes as usual, with the exception of internship and education placements. Since I have an internship, this means I have Thursday off and can finally spend some time blagging.

Students take either four seminar classes or three seminars and one of the aforementioned placements. I have one class a day, Monday through Wednesday, but some people may have two classes on the same day depending on the way ASE constructs the overall schedule. Classes and placements never take place on Friday. Fridays are sacred. The only regular ASE activity on a Friday is study trips, which nearly every class takes. As an example, my course in Gothic literature takes a trip to London to go on the Jack the Ripper tour. ... Although now that I think of it, that may be the one study trip in the whole program that actually takes place on a Saturday. But you get the point.

The quintessential Oxford view

Classes meet once a week for about 2 hours, so you need to be on top of your stuff. Ghosts and the Gothic and Worlds Beyond Oxford are the heaviest in terms of reading, but that doesn't mean other literature classes are light. Many classes assign background reading in addition to the primary reading, which in an English course may well add up to one book per week. Background reading, and sometimes the primary reading, won't be given to you. It's kept in the library and it doesn't leave. Homework is an adventure in pro-activeness.

The classes themselves will vary from professor to professor, or rather from tutor to tutor, as in England the term professor is reserved for the distinguishment of Professor Emeritus. Most literature courses will include some degree of discussion and you may be assigned unmarked 5-minute presentations.

Radcliffe Square--prettiest spot in Oxford

As far as assignments go, we write a diagnostic paper of about 500-1000 words for each class. They are marked to give you an idea of what the professor is looking for, but the diagnostic does not affect your final grade in the class. Rather, your final grade is divided into four sections of 25%--two essays of 1500-2000 words apiece, written in weeks 5 and 10 of class; the final exam, typically a timed essay written in class the final week of courses; and class participation.

This week, our tutors returned our first papers, which we were particularly apprehensive about considering the scare speech the program's director gave during orientation. My grades (and from what I hear, the grades of most everyone else) ran the range of B+ to A-, just as they do at UMW.

Oriel College

So any fellow Eagles aspiring to ASE can rest easy. My academic experience here has been very comparable to my home institution.

Mapping Out Bath (Part Two)

I decided my image map of Bath would be much improved if I marked which areas had an image linked.

Black stars mark areas of tourist interest, such as the Roman Baths or Victoria Art Gallery.

Red stars mark places I frequent in my day to day life, like my house, the street I take to go to swing dance or the movie theater.

Green stars mark places with nice scenery, generally parks or gardens.

Blue stars mark the site of clubs and pubs.

Arrows indicate a site that is technically off the map.

Mapping Out Bath (Part One)

After a month in Bath, I feel like I live here.

...At least in the parts of town I frequent. Once I head north of the Abbey, things get a tad more shaky. Getting my bearings has definitely been a challenge, but fortunately this gives me an excuse to make awesome image maps so I can make the connection between the places I go and where they are relative to one another.

This is only a rough draft. I'm using pictures of popular tourist destinations and my house to warm up my image mapping muscles. I haven't included my workplace, Nelson House or many of the other areas I frequent. I'll add more and more items as I get good pictures. But this will do for now.

Hover over an area of the map to see a photo. This map includes photos for Bath Abbey, the Roman Baths, Sally Lunn's, Thermae Bath Spa, the Little Theatre and 5 Clarendon Villas, where I live. My house is actually farther south of the train station than the map shows, so I've linked that picture at the map edge where a box indicates the direction to Widcombe.

Quick Question

Just an amusing moment from the past week.

The first and really only question my friend Rob had about the United States:

"Is Fox News really as bad as it seems?"

Brits think Bill O'Reilly's biased? You can't explain that.

Understatement

Today most of the people in ASE went to the Cotswolds. As part of our trip, we walked for a brief spell along Cotswold Way, which is a 102-mile nature trail stretching across the region.

We were told to wear comfortable shoes for walking and it was also suggested that we bring an extra pair of shoes "as it may be a bit muddy."

Yes, that is a stile directly over a pile of mud. It was one of many stiles directly over a pile of mud. This is perhaps the least amount of mud we encountered the whole walk from Broadway Tower. My sneakers are CAKED.

British understatement bites again!

A Brief Musical Interlude

I'm tired of text only posts.

Here's a video of the band I went to see play last Saturday night :

Accents

Our first week in the UK, several people continuously commented that hearing British accents everywhere really threw them for a loop. The other student interning with me at Footprint Publishing still has a little difficulty understanding our supervisor's Scottish accent. I, on the other hand, barely even noticed.

Either I'm very adaptable or I watch entirely too much Doctor Who.

Or maybe the mid-Atlantic accent I'm used to isn't as noticeably different from British as other American dialects. Over the weekends, I've had multiple people, both British and other Europeans, tell me that I don't sound that different. (I suspect, however, that such comments are fueled by high noise level and...other environmental factors.)

But lo and behold! There is an honest soul out there:

Stranger: "All Americans sound the same to me."

Me: "What? Loud and brash?"

Stranger: "Yeah, pretty much."

Me: "...Yeah, that's actually about right."

I have never felt so noisy in my entire life.

A Blog Title Justified

Saturday night I went out with my flatmate and some of her friends and as we were leaving, a group of French guys, upon learning we were Americans, decided it would be fun to guess where we were from.

First try?

Texas.

I love it when I'm right.

Interestingly enough, though, their next guess was Oklahoma. I would have thought New York or California to be high up on the list, but as it turns out quintessential America is the good ol' Midwest. They only guessed New York after I specified we were from the East Coast. And then they blazed through Philadelphia and Boston before getting to Washington DC--close enough!

Tweet Happy

This post is a bit overdue since we talked about this in orientation yesterday morning, but the past few days have been incredibly packed.

Nevertheless, we've got our first American stereotype!

The tutors for our program are primarily from Oxford. So let's all just take a moment and imagine what an Oxford professor supposedly looks like.

Got it? Good. Now let me guess...

Old man, silver haired, glasses, smokes a pipe, tweed jacket with the elbow patches. He's not quite sure what "the internet" means. Perhaps he's like a British Harold Bloom and thinks every time a university student reads Toni Morrison instead of Herman Melville, it kills a bunny.

In addressing our stereotypes of Oxford professors, the director of the program decided to mention his own stereotype of an American professor.

First off, it's a woman. She's probably in her 40s, but looks much younger and drives a SmartCar or a VW Beetle or maybe a red convertible. She tweets her students.

So, there we have it. While I have yet to notice someone reacting to my personal American-ness, I'm definitely hearing some interesting generalizations. While we think of Oxford as the land of your traditional OMP, the British see America as the epitome of the YFP.

(PS--I imagine Dr. Gary Richards suddenly feels very pleased with himself and doesn't quite know why, thanks to that last sentence.)

Going Metric

Time in England: about 12 hours

Time in Bath: about 4 hours

Time with working internet: about 30 minutes

But that's not what we're really talking about right now.

Because as we were loading our luggage onto the bus to Bath, the driver asked Sarah (my traveling companion and flatmate) how much her suitcase weighed.

"50 pounds."

"Oi, what's pounds then? Pounds is money!"

And I realized I have to start thinking in metric.

Fortunately, I've been familiar with the following handy guide for quite some time:

(Click the image to enlarge it.)

Finally. Mindless surfing on xkcd is completely useful and therefore completely justifiable.

3 Days Til Departure

Whenever someone learns that I'm about to go study abroad in England, I get a lot of comments about bad food, bad teeth and "those buses with, like, the two floors." So why not turn the tables? How do you suppose the Brits (or any other Europeans, for that matter) view the United States?

Most posts will be about my day to day life as a Yank in the UK, but I'm expecting to encounter a cultural stereotype or two.

After all, even my fellow Americans ask me why I don't have a Southern accent.