I suddenly have a newfound appreciation for the Nick movie "Snow Day"

I write tonight, fully into my internship and my classes, in a rare moment of relaxation from the hectic pace of London life, or at least life on this program. Though I’ve been busy, I couldn’t have asked for a better four days. On Sunday, everyone in our program went to Greenwich amidst a giant snowstorm (well, maybe not giant, but definitely the biggest one that I’ve been a part of). Greenwich, I believe, used to be a small rural town outside of London, but it was absorbed as London grew. From our time there on Sunday, I got the sense of a posh suburban town, replete with quaint shops, a small downtown area, and plenty of park space. It was nice, and while I’ve loved my time in London so far, I still enjoyed getting out into nature and roaming about vast open spaces.

I find it amazing that a snowy day seems to bring out the kid in all of us. I got in constant snowball fights, slid around the ice, and even got down in the snow and made my first snow angel! Not coincidentally, I had some of the most fun that day as I’ve had in months. It seems that we often forget some of the simplest pleasures in life: games with friends, enjoying the outdoors, laughing at ourselves, smiling too much. Amidst everything else I’m doing this semester, I hope I can find some days to just goof off and marvel at the beauty of existing in the moment.

After I got back to Chapel Hill, one of my best friends from Chapel Hill, Meg, got in from Oxford, and crashed in my flat for three nights en route to Amsterdam for another study abroad program. While she was here, our mutual friend Isaac often stopped by the flat with his friend Elston. Isaac is another Chapel Hill person who was in London for a few days as part of his post-grad intercontinental adventures, and Elston is an actual Londoner who became friendly with Isaac when he studied in Chapel Hill for a semester. None of us had seen much of each other last semester, so the visit turned into a reunion of sorts—lots of catching up and filling in, an endless supply of new stories, and some old ones thrown in for good measure. We did a lot of fun things over the last few days, but I think the essence of Meg and Isaac’s stay for me was summed up in a moment on Monday night.

Per my flatmates’ suggestion, we had gone to a fish-and-chips-type restaurant in Bloomsbury. There, we ended up in a secluded booth with a solitary candle in the middle. I was just finishing off a phenomenal English beer, and the end of some story swapping saw a quick break in conversation. I was full with good food, and I was feeling especially close to these three people to whom I had opened up about my goals, fears, and shortcomings. I looked around the table wearing this sly smile on my face, knowing that years down the road, I’d remember this night, and knowing that I was lucky to share my life, at least for the time being, with the people sitting in that very booth. I think one of the great things about being abroad is that I’ve some time and perspective to look at my life back home without being distracted by being there. Sometimes, I’ve found that I maybe have been coming up short when I thought I was doing fine, but in moments like the one in the booth, I found that I had something special in something that can be as ubiquitous as friendship. And that means a lot.

Heading up to the Royal Observatory!

Self-explanatory.

Under the ship in Greenwich.

Snow in Greenwich!

More snow.

My wonderful crew.

Yes, I ran around London with my weird toe shoes. Yes, it was awesome.

I’ve faced a few dilemmas in my first week in London, the biggest of which have been whether to renew my subscription to the New York Times and whether to sign up for a gym membership. My parents graciously got me a subscription for my birthday this summer, which unfortunately expired one week before leaving on the phone. I figured I’d stretch out my ten free articles for as long as possible, and then save my money to pick up a subscription here. I ran out of articles after two days. So, after talking with my boss and an English friend (and some of my own research, of course) I decided to follow the Guardian, a left-leaning “broadsheet” here with a free website. I’ve been really impressed with its articles and analysis (some of my Facebook friends may have noticed my occasional Guardian postings over the last few days), and I’ve used the Guardian to follow much of the Algerian hostage crisis and EU referendum fiasco. But I still missed waking up with Paul Krugman, Nate Silver, Nick Kristof, et al, and once the President came out with his gun safety initiative, I gave in to Mr. Sulzberger & co and purchased a subscription for another year. While I would have liked the experience of seeing the world solely through British eyes, I figure I’m enough of a political junkie to keep up with both the Guardian and the New York Times during the semester.

As for the gym membership, I’d been going back and forth between paying 100 pounds to get access to the YMCA gym for three months and running regularly. I don’t run much, but I’ve learned to enjoy it ever since I started crushing on a runner in high school (I’m sorry to say that that tactic failed). After experiencing the London cold for a few days, and realizing that I could hardly be outside for more than 15 minutes at a time, I talked with my parents earlier in the week and resigned myself to sign up at the YMCA on Friday. Yet before I left, I decided that I might as well give running a shot—if I hated it or got too cold, I could just come back and sign up later. So I layered up, strapped on my Vibram toe-shoes, and ventured out into the cold. What followed was one of the coolest runs I’ve taken. I hardly felt the cold and ran all the way up to Regents Park, a gargantuan public park in Northwest London. Walking around the perfectly-manicured trees, I realized that this is what studying abroad is really about: stepping out of my comfort zone (in this case, buildings with central heating) and doing something that may not turn out well. I wasn’t going to cocoon myself in the gym anymore—it’s going to be way too much fun to explore the parks and sites of London on foot. The runs might be scary at first, but if they work out, this ethereal London world may become a little less daunting.

So if these dilemmas tested my willingness to integrate myself into British culture, I guess ended up a bit split. I couldn’t tear myself from the American-based newspaper I’ve grown to love, but I avoided the allure of the all-too-American gym and made a commitment to exploring the city outside. All bets are off, though, once I start my internship on Monday.

I'm pretty sure my bed is tilted more degrees than the temperature outside

From Monday:

I realize that my first two blog posts have been a bit heavy and esoteric, so I’m going write this one a bit more newsy and off-the-cuff. I write tonight from my somewhat-precariously tilted bed, three floors above ground level, on Bedford Place in Bloomsbury. Aside from the slight tilt in the floor level, I’ve been really impressed with the flat—great location and relatively spacious for the London address. If I lived in a place with this much room and this good of a view (if you look the right way, you can see Russell Square) in New York, I’d be a happy man. For whatever reason, I find myself starting to turn the corner on the third day of new experiences, from Leadershape to Birthright, and today was no different. I went on a shopping excursion alone today for some toiletries, and managed not to get lost. The processes that molded my formidable mental map of DC last summer are at work again, and I currently know my way around a few streets near the flat. I bought a 6-pound map today that’s at least 100 pages thick and covers just about all of Greater London, so I plan on carrying that around with me a lot.

It snowed today! It didn’t snow very hard, and the snow didn’t stick, but when you’ve only seen it snowing twice before in your life, any type of snow is a big deal. It’s just amazing to look out the window and see little specks of white fluttering across your view. Nature can be so cool sometimes.

Finally, I changed around my course schedule since I’ve been here, so I’m now taking classes on British politics, British history, and the London art world. I’d been signed up for a literature course, but I realized that I didn’t want to spend too much time in London reading Shakespeare and Dickens, and I might as well use class to get to all the art museums my aunt keeps telling me about. That’s about all from today, but I’ll check in soon! 

Musings from Up in the Air

            The Delta flight tracker shows that the plane is just crossing the Georgia-South Carolina border as I write, but as I peer out the window to my left (I’m ever thankful to my mother for booking me this window seat), the cloud cover has blanketed any view of the ground I might have—puffy off-white clouds that seem to roll up and down like hills and valleys miles in the sky. I won’t see American soil again until late April. These last few days have been so hectic for me: getting prescriptions, packing, saying goodbye to friends, obtaining my visa, watching crappy Carolina basketball, that I’ve hardly had time to let it sink in that I was actually leaving the States for three and a half months. So when I boarded this plane from Atlanta to Heathrow, I stepped into a hard dose of reality. I texted my mom, as always, to let her know that I was on the plane, but I realized that when the plane lands and I take my phone out, I won’t have service.  I shut off my phone, put away my father’s Kindle that I’m borrowing for the semester, and stared out the window.

I’d determined earlier today that the last song I would listen to stateside would be Crosby & Nash’s “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” So, as the announcement came to turn off all electronic devices and the creepy red-haired flight attendant who says “Smoking… is NOT allowed” while wagging her finger appeared on screen, I snuck in one last listen. The thing about the Crosby & Nash version of this song is that they take these simple, patriotic verses (“Land where my fathers died / Land of the pilgrim’s pride,” not the most unique poetry out there) strip them bare of all pomp and circumstance, strip them of all suggestion that America is awesome and the greatest country on Earth, and leave a hauntingly personal reminder that, like it or not, this is our homeland. So as I’m listening to this song, by sheer luck I catch in my field of vision an American flag fluttering on a nearby loading dock. And as I’m listening to these lyrics, “Land where my fathers died / Land of the pilgrim’s pride,” I realize that the flag in the distance is my flag, and I’m not going to see it for a few months. I realize that though I’m going to a place that speaks English, though I’m going with two dozen other members of the UNC family, I’m still venturing to a foreign place. I feel unsettled, sure, but also exhilarated and ready. As a young man of twenty, deeply entrenched and comfortable at home and in school, it’s not often that I get the chance to feel so unsettled. It’s been too long since I stepped out of my comfort zone.

Pre-Trip Excitement

            The question comes smoothly, inevitably, like an old sniffle or cough that stays with you even after the cold: “Woah, you’re going to London??? (You must be excited.) Are you excited???”

            “Yes,” I nod, “I’m looking forward to it.”

            The question, curiously, reminds me of a question I used to get frequently during my first year at college: “Oh, so you’re in college now? Don’t you love it?” Those who know me well may have heard my thoughts on that question and the danger I think it poses to the psyches of young scholars (or at least to the psyche of this young scholar), but I won’t go into that here. This is a blog about studying abroad, after all.

            So am I excited about London? No, not really.

            I can imagine the shockwaves, the epithet of “ungrateful college kid” starting to form. It must be that I think three months in London is just another experience, right? My spot on the program should be taken by someone actually excited about studying abroad, right? Right?

            Truthfully, there’s not too much I get excited about anymore. I can boil the bulk of my excitement down to three main things: 1) reuniting with old friends, 2) returning to the towns of Chapel Hill, Warwick, NY, or Cleveland, GA after any type of absence, and 3) Carolina basketball. With these three things, I can visualize the experience I’m going to have: laughing about old jokes, cheering a Reggie Bullock 3-pointer, seeing the sun set over Davis Library from my fourth-floor dorm room. Yet, I’ve never been to England before and I’ve never seen the neighborhood in which I’m living, so when I try to visualize something I may experience there, I come up a bit short. I have no idea what I’ll see when I first touch down at Heathrow, no idea what it will be like to walk up the steps of the Winston House, no idea how it will feel to unlock the door to my London flat. I hope they’ll be memorable experiences—I hope I’ll be pleasantly surprised, but if they’re not, I don’t want to be let down.

            So I’m not excited about London. Hopefully someday, after I’ve had a great experience on this program and I’m returning to the city for who-knows-what, I’ll be excited about it. But for now, I can only answer these questions truthfully:

• ·      Am I looking forward to the program? Most definitely.
• ·      Do I feel like I made the right decision? Unhesitatingly, yes.
• ·      Do I think I’ll uniquely benefit from being in London? Yes—I think London is the right place for me next semester.
• ·      Do I think I’ll grow as a person? It’s hard not to.
• ·      Do I think I’ll have a good semester? I can’t predict the future, but I think I’ll learn a lot and have a lot of fun.
• ·       What am I most looking forward to in London? The surprises.