From Friday, January 13

Today is my birthday, and I am turning 21. I’m not really a big drinker but I was disappointed when I realized that I would be celebrating this birthday in England. After 21 there are no more big birthdays until 30 (or as my uncle said, it’s the last time you’re actually happy to turn a year older), so I wanted it to be something special, and here the drinking age is 18, so I figured no one would care. But when I ran this by my English born flatmates they assured me that 21 was also a milestone birthday in the UK, as now I would be old enough to both rent a car and adopt a child. Not that I would, but it’s nice to know I could.

This year my birthday falls on Friday the 13th, which I hope does not mean that I will have bad luck this year, because right now I need all the luck I can get. My first two weeks in London have lasted what feels like a month. It’s been amazing—stimulating, exhausting, scary and exciting all at once. The first few days were really tough. I arrived on the first of January, (after celebrating New Years in mid air), and clawed my way to my dorm through a transit strike, wielding a seventy pound suitcase and having absolutely no clue about London geography. I found the dorm with the help of a friendly (though I fear unlicensed,) cab driver who drove me from Heathrow. When I arrived at my dorm at eight thirty in the morning I expected to have to wait until ten o’clock when I understood that I would be able to check into my dorm, receive my key and then take a well deserved, badly needed shower. However, at ten o’clock, after I had been quietly reading in the lobby for an hour and a half seated next to my suitcase, the desk attendant on duty informed me that we would not be able to check into our rooms until two o’clock. Grumble. Fortunately the desk attendant was really nice and really sympathetic to both my poor planning and my jet lag, so he allowed me to leave my bag behind the desk with him so that I could go out and walk around the neighborhood. Gratefully I accepted his offer, deposited my bags and went out to explore.

The neighborhood that I’m in is really great. Although the most prominent feature seems to be a pub on nearly every corner, I am an easy walk away from nearly everything a student could want: supermarkets, restaurants, and copious pubs are all there to take care of my eating and social needs. What I’m really excited about, however, is the fact that I’m five minutes away from the National Theatre and National Film Theatre in one direction and the New and Old Vic in the other. I’m also right across the bridge from Soho and the West End. As soon as I crossed Waterloo Bridge, which is two blocks away from me, it’s about a fifteen-minute walk to the Novello Theatre, where the Royal Shakespeare Company performs, and about a forty-minute walk to the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. On my side of the river I’m an easy walk to the Tate Modern and the Globe Theatre. Theaters and museums everywhere I turn, it doesn’t get any better than this.

I didn’t discover all of this on my first walk, however, only the pubs were immediately apparent. Also, I discovered that London is not a city of right angles the way New York is, and I had been out of the dorm lobby for fifteen minutes before I was lost. Fortunately, what the geography lacks in logic is more than compensated for in the street signs. Everything is clearly marked and there are sign posts every couple of blocks that point you towards various tourist attractions. I remembered that my dorm was located near the IMAX Theater, which was apparently big enough, and important enough to merit a little arrow that tells tourists how to get there by foot. Thus I was able to stumble back to my dorm, now very tired and feeling very dirty, by two o’clock to receive my key and check into my room.

My room is very small, but it is clean (or was when I moved in,) and contains its own bathroom! I never had such a luxury at Barnard. The room reminds me of a bunk on a ship, everything is so compact. The bathroom for instance is a single room with a sink, a toilet, and a showerhead coming out of the wall with a drain in the middle of the floor. The hall that I am on contains nine such single rooms, and one kitchen. Nine rooms and a kitchen constitute a flat. When I arrived the kitchen was a mess. I’d never seen a common space so filthy. The sink was full, yet there were dirty dishes on every possible surface, food and empty liquor bottles were strewn about and there was a full bottle of milk on the table which had long since turned to whatever milk turns to when it has been left out of the refrigerator for multiple weeks. It was then I realized that I would be living with guys.

However, at that particular moment I wasn’t living with guys. I wasn’t living with anybody, the college was off on winter break and I was alone. That first day one of my flat mates, Nancy who lives next door to me, was there with her boyfriend, but she stayed only long enough to tell me that she had come into London to celebrate new years and would be leaving the next day until the 16th, when classes started. She got me oriented, explained that I should feel free to use any of the dishes and appliances in the kitchen, and then noting that I must be “knackered” after my long flight, left me to my unpacking. The way the dorm was situated I didn’t have access to anyone else’s flat, so for the first couple of days I was completely alone. I spent my time wandering through the neighborhood and buying things like groceries and shampoo, trying to get myself set up.
    
As I said before those first few days were hard. It was always rainy and foggy and not having anybody to talk to was depressing, and I found that I could only wander until about four thirty when it got dark and it then became hard to find my way around. In the days leading up to my flight I had done nothing to prepare for my arrival other than take a shopping trip to buy adaptors. My father kept urging me to sit down with a map and study the London geography so that I would know my way around once I got there. I refused because I am a procrastinator, and back in the states I did not want to think about the fact that I only had ten days between the end of exams and my flight here, so I didn’t. The result was that I was woefully under prepared mentally for London, particularly when it came to directions. I would wander for a bit and then I would bump into landmarks. I would realize that I’d heard of these places, their names would ring bells, but I had no idea where they were or what the history behind them was. No matter what direction I walked, it seemed I would always find myself back at Covent Gardens, a large open-air market near Waterloo Bridge whose name I recognized from My Fair Lady. I did manage, however, to do some basic sight seeing. I saw the Cortauld Gallery at Somerset House, (another museum in my neighborhood), went shopping at Covent Gardens, saw the London Aquarium (which, I’m sorry to say is not as good as the one in Baltimore), the National Gallery, and the Globe. I hummed Sondheim on Fleet Street and Gilbert and Sullivan on Chancery lane.

The highlight of these first days was the fact that I saw my first show the second day I was here. It was Once in a Lifetime, the Kaufman and Hart play that lampoons Hollywood. It was playing at the National Theatre, and I got ten pound student rush tickets. At the performance I ran into two Americans who had just graduated college. One was working in London on an extended student Visa and the other was there visiting her for the holidays. I was thrilled both to meet people, and to see the show, which was very well done despite being slightly dated. I was amused to hear the accents because many of the actors were obviously British actors “doing” an American accent. I kept thinking, is this really what I sound like?

Other than the loneliness, the first few days were intimidating because I kept wandering places, and then getting lost, and once lost I was afraid to ask for directions or even consult a map. Living in New York has given me tourist anxiety. I’m afraid that someone will mistake me for a tourist in New York, and I’m afraid the fear has followed me to London. I’m afraid to look like I don’t know where I’m going by consulting a map, and afraid to speak because I know I will thus reveal my nationality, and hence my tourist status. The result is that instead of looking like I’m lost I end up actually lost. It took a good three or four days before I started to find my way around, and then gradually I became more comfortable reading a map and asking for directions.

Things got better on the fifth when orientation for Junior Year Study Abroad students began. The orientation itself was five hours of mind numbing tedium, but I was grateful for it because I started to meet people. Other students emerged from their own isolated flats, and I met a group of Americans who were also Juniors studying abroad. At first I think I may have scared people off just because of my sheer joy at having other people to talk to. I spoke loudly and constantly, trying to fit five days of conversations into the first meeting. Someone would mention that they like David Sedaris and I would nod my head enthusiastically and agree that I LOVED David Sedaris! And then go off for ten minutes about which of his books did she think was best, and why and had she heard him read aloud etc. etc. It’s a wonder that anyone stayed to talk to me at all, but after a while I calmed down and I met a nice group of people.

Just when I started meeting other Americans, the British students came back and I began to meet my flat mates. I didn’t spend much time with them at first because they had exams and papers due, and hence were shut up in their rooms, coming to the kitchen only when they needed food, or occasionally to watch a little TV as a study break. One night, however, one of the Americans and I were cooking dinner in the kitchen and we had a long conversation with three of them, which is where I found out about what it means to turn 21 when you’re British. We asked stupid questions about whether or not one could really feed birds for tuppence, and how much a stone is compared to a pound, and they asked questions about whether or not American proms are like the proms in the movies. It was a nice cultural exchange. Everyone in the flat seems really great, and they’ve been really nice about dealing with the random American student who moved into their flat while they were away.

My mother also arrived on the sixth. She’s staying at a hotel on the South Bank, and we are able to meet every day for a little bit. Originally her plan was to fly over with me, and to help me get settled, but due to a comedy of errors the plane tickets got botched and she ended up having to fly a week later. She is staying through the 14th, and she’s been really nice about spending time with me and then going off to do her own things in the evening so that I have a nice balance between spending time with her and meeting people at the college. Together we’ve done a fair bit of sight seeing. I’ll come into the kitchen in the evening when I get home and Gerard, one of my flatmates, will ask me what I’ve done that day. I’ll tell him I’ve been to Westminster Abbey, or the Victoria and Albert, and he’ll laugh because he’s never been to any of those places. These things are so touristy that the real residents of London forget that they even exist. I realized just how touristy they were when I was looking through the Westminster Abbey gift shop and saw things that had absolutely nothing to do with the Abbey. There were tins that were shaped like double decker busses, teddy bears dressed in British Horse Guard regalia, and most bizarrely the complete works of Jane Austen. Apparently anything that vaguely had to do with England had to do with Westminster Abbey.

Other then the Abbey my mom and I have visited the Freud Museum, Harrods, the Science center, the Zoo, gone for High Tea at the Tea museum near my dorm, and seen three shows. I think it’s funny that when I let my mother choose where we are going for the day she has chosen the Zoo, the Science center and seeing Mary Poppins. I wonder if she is trying to infantilize me? The list of things we’ve done doesn’t look very long when I read it back but our days have been busy, mainly because we spend so much time walking around lost that finding these places becomes an adventure in itself. Unlike me, my mother is very rational about how she plans her day. Instead of just taking off she will sit down with a guidebook and look things over and write out an itinerary. However, like me she has a lousy sense of direction, so while I never consider myself lost because I never have anywhere else I should be, she gets frustrated because she is trying to find specific places that consistently manage to evade us. All in all I’ve been pretty busy, but I’m looking forward to Monday when classes start and my life has settled down into some sort of routine.

I’ve written a lot, and it’s not nearly half of what I was hoping to say. Keep reading though, now that I’ve caught up with myself the next few entries will be filled with more description and detail and less narrative. Stay tuned!