Hello, London calling. It’s Bryan Adams.
I don’t know what I was expecting. Heavy accents, yes. Driving on the wrong side of the road, yes. Fish and Chips, yes. But Bryan Adams, no.
Leaving St. Louis wasn’t weird. My 45 minute flight to Chicago was a breeze. I listened to music blaring through the speakers of the kid next to me (how he still has functioning eardrums at this point is something I do not understand) and tried to close my eyes. I made the not so short journey from American Airlines to Terminal 5 at O’Hare and quickly got through security to the (somewhat) familiar faces of three other Mizzou students traveling with me. Time check: 5:30 p.m.,
Saturday, May 17. The stress, I was expecting.
My goal for the flight was to sleep. With no one next to me, and the extra three to four inches of legroom from my seat upgrade, you would think that would be easy. Think again. I dozed of for short periods of time throughout the flight, just waiting to land.
My long wait in customs was ending when a rather surly man grilled me on why I was entering the country. Apparently I don’t articulate well when stressed and he wasn’t pleased with my responses. He made me go find an email confirming that I was indeed supposed to be there and when given that decided to be happy and nice. The unfamiliarity, I was expecting.
We were greeted by a driver to take us to our flat in the area of Maida Vale and that’s when it happened. Bryan Adams was singing to me about the summer of ’69. I laughed to myself, thinking, wait, really? But what was I expecting? I guess it is the little things that make the big cultural differences, and music is not one of them.
Word use and mannerisms make all the difference. The level of volume when speaking is drastically different. It is easy to pick out the Americans from the Brits. Hopefully the “tourist-ness” will fade soon but I think until I get the hang of calling it football instead of soccer and crisps instead of chips, I will simply seem like a silly American.
So lookout London, Bryan Adams and I are here to stay. (At least for a little while).
Cheers,
Abby
Things I have learned so far:
Don’t talk on the tube, don’t look at people on the tube. (But of course the no talking doesn’t work for our group very well).
Drivers don’t stop for pedestrians. At all. Ever. Case in point: I was almost hit by a motorcycle. (This was definitely one of those “Dorothy, we aren’t at Mizzou anymore” moments).
Stay to the left at all times. Walking, driving, standing, it doesn’t matter. Stay to the left.
Bryan Adams is Canadian. Who knew?