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.)