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On relearning in the Boston of Europe

By austineliasdejesus

London was not designed on a grid system. It was not even built as a city based on layers of concentric circles. Rather, it’s a hodgepodge of streets and squares and alleys that somehow makes up a city that 9 million people call home. This means that, if you’re walking, unless you have a good general idea of where you’re going, you will become lost. Larger, more prominent streets veer off into slim side streets, which then veer off into even slimmer side streets, which inexplicably lead to a small park, which contains a small cafe that might have WiFi. And by the time you reach that small cafe in that small park off that slimmest of side streets, you realize that you are way off from where you thought you were, and that you are both exploring and lost in a city that you are totally unfamiliar with but will be your home for three months.

Also, you have been here for a week and have yet to buy a UK SIM card. So, whenever you leave your flat, your phone turns into an iPod, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing because it gives you an excuse to not be on your phone. But it also wrestles the raft that is the “Maps” app from your arms, leaving you to rely on your own sense of direction, which is poor, and then—when that strategy inevitably fails—ask help from strangers, which is just the kind of social interaction that you have spent a good amount of your life avoiding.

Every day of my first week in London, I have become lost. And, every day, I’ve had to swallow the pill dry, and ask a stranger for directions. On Wednesday I ran around Bloomsbury frantically trying to find UCL’s main quad for my enrolment appointment. It took me half an hour to finally admit defeat and ask for directions from a police officer. By the time I found the quad, I was sweaty, late for my appointment, and annoyed by the fact that I had basically been told that I’d been in panicked search of a street I’d been walking directly parallel of for half an hour.

I’d been told that London was Europe’s version of Manhattan, but it doesn’t quite seem to have that same glitzy grime. I see London as Europe's much larger and much more posh version of Boston. It’s different, but I like it. I like it a lot here, actually, which makes my soul hurt a bit more when I loudly fail in public and my aggressive American-ness starts to show. I’ve ordered filter coffee at cafe’s that only serve espresso-based drinks. While strolling on the sidewalk, I’ve peered into the left side of passing cars and thought “How is this car driving itself?” And I’ve had a few awkward money transactions where I’ve fumbled for bills and coins with the same grace of someone trying to pick up a pencil while wearing oven mitts. I have not only been A Big Dumb American, but I have been The Big Dumb American.

If you’re in the mood, your self-esteem is at an OK level, and your feet aren’t killing you, getting lost and being confused can be the same thing as learning new things and exploring. A couple of times this week, I’ve felt this way. Adrift, both alone and with new friends, I’ve stumbled upon places in Central and some parts of South London that I’ve liked. Long, desintation-less walks have led me to random markets, parts of Southwark, a number of random Bowie tributes, a handful of good bookstores, and Primrose Hill at sunset.

Really, I feel like a freshman again, which, as a senior, is funny and distressing, the latter of which being the more salient feeling. I’d forgotten how socially competitive the first week of college can be, with everyone in a mad scramble to seek out and cling on to every friend, group, opportunity, and social event they possibly can in an effort to build a life here. It’s all slightly embarrassing, and even a bit daunting.

The struggle to build some kind of routinized life during your study abroad experience is something you’re constantly warned about before you leave, but it’s difficult to realize just how difficult this is until you arrive. When someone who had just returned from a semester abroad would tell me something like this, I’d think to myself, “How hard can it really be?” I now know that this thought is kind of like thinking, “Well couldn’t the Titanic have just moved to the left a little?”

Some people around me seem to be more acutely aware of all of this, though. And more willing to go out and do the social thing. More willing to go out and be part of a group of people with people whose names they might not even remember a month or two from now. Somewhere over the last three years, I forgot how to put in an actual effort to find friends, my place, and new things. I’ve been re-learning all of this this week, and I’m still in the process of doing so. It’s the kind of course that only failing loudly, not a SIM card, will be able to correct.