Cheers from London!

View from Trafalgar Square, London, UK. Ink, 9 July 2016.

Cheers from London!

Britain is a wonderful place, I’ve been having such a great time. So much has happened in the last two weeks.

First – being here was so challenging at the beginning. It’s funny to say, given how I managed to thrive in French immersion and survived the Spanish escapade and brought myself all around the East Coast and back, but here’s the challenge of being in England: I didn’t know a soul when I started. I arrived two weeks ago, on July 3, and navigated the tube to Notting Hill (where I’m staying) and finally dropped off my bags, and I’m gonna be really honest, my first urge was to lie down and never get up. Not from tiredness, but because I didn’t know what on Earth I’d gotten myself into. I was there, sure – but then what? I definitely wondered how the heck I was going to meet people, I actually knew no one.

Luckily for me, this time the language barrier wasn’t a big deal, but unluckily for me, I wasn’t with a program (like in Rennes), I wasn’t visiting friends or family (like in Spain and the States), and I actually had no friends, no companions, no compatriots, no one at all. And the dorm I’m staying at (I’m technically a student of Imperial College London right now) is very 5/10. So how on Earth am I having a wonderful time here? I met people. It was really hard to meet people, but I did. The first few days, I said hello to literally anyone and everyone, and I was even crazy enough to go to a pub on the Imperial campus and just blindly ask if I could join a table just so I could have some company (a highly terrifying experience, let me tell you). It’s so challenging, putting yourself out there and just hoping people are nice, but would you believe it, they were extremely nice and I had a fantastic evening talking with these British students, and I learned so much about British culture.

The Palace of Westminster and the Big Ben. 9 July 2016.

I managed to find so many lovely people at my dorm – I discovered the hall lounge where everyone hangs out and met a group of about 15 kids from Louisiana State doing classes here in London, and they’re now pretty much my closest friends here. The dorm such an assortment of people, it’s so international, and I’ve met kids here from Britain (from all parts of it) and from all over the world. You get so many interesting and unique perspectives – everything from learning about the complexities of the Bolivian government, to integrating with Syrian refugees in Malta, to learning Southern British slang, to learning about Australian medicine, to learning German phrases from a polyglot Austrian. And every time there’s a new face, I just try my best to toss caution and doubt and worries aside and go up and introduce myself and ask them about where they’re from and why they’re here and just generally go out of my way to try to make friends. I’ve also hung out with my coworkers at the hospital (I’m doing research in Intensive Care and Burns at a nearby medical center), despite them all being a decade older than me, but age really doesn’t matter when it comes down to hanging out at a pub watching footie (i.e. soccer) (yeah that’s what they actually call it) (actually I’m not making this up). And then I’ve reconnected with an old friend I found in Marylebone and found out that she’s living with tons of Rochesterians?!?!?! So I’ve ever had a blast-from-the-past hanging out with people from school. And then I’ve followed some family connections and met up with old family friends (who I’ve usually never met before) which has been both awesome and fascinating, because it gives a very different perspective on Britain from the one my crazy university-aged friends can give me here.

It’s not easy – it’s never easy – and there are a lot of days where I still wonder why I’m here, but one thing I’ve learned is: if you put yourself out there, if you smile, and if you listen, and if you make the colossal effort it sometimes requires, you’ll make friends really quickly and it will make your life that much more meaningful. It’s tough because it’s so short-lived – the Louisianians are leaving next week, the Australians and Rochesterians in two weeks, and some people I’ve met have already left, but people enter and people exit in this lively sort of theatre, and it makes the time you share so much more profound when everything is so transient.

Advice for anyone who’s ever worried about moving to a new place or integrating into a new life, or to anyone who’s just unsure about how they’ll make friends: just go up and talk to people, know that everyone else is human just like you, and almost everyone eating dinner alone is secretly wishing they had someone to talk to, and that the worst that can possibly happen is that they’ll just say no and then you can find someone else to talk to who’s near. I know how hard it is, but if you push yourself, accept that sometimes it’s embarrassing or frightening, and really try to breach the barrier of silence and awkwardness by just saying “Hey there – what’s your name? What brought you here?” You’ll make friends before you even know it, and it makes the experience ten thousand times better. The past couple of weeks have been challenging, but the rewards for me have been immediate and obvious.

London, England, United Kingdom; 16 July, 2016.