The Grand Tour

In the past (i.e.: the 18th century) the term Grand Tour was given to the trip many affluent Brits took across Europe, visiting all the most Enlightened cities in France, Spain, Italy and the like. In this case I am referring to the fact that I have finally taken some pictures of my room and kitchen so you can see where I live.

This is my bed. The only bedding they provide is a fitted sheet, duvet and cover, and a pillow and pillowcase. I really thought I would be cold, but apart from the fact that it actually doesn't get that cold here, I have been just fine at night with only one cover. The cabinet next to my bed has a little refrigerator in it, which is nice, and there's a little set of two cubbies under my bed where I put my books and other things I need to get to.

This is my wardrobe, which has the shelves, hanging space and two drawers. The top drawer locks with a little key that also locks our kitchen cabinets, and they're all labeled with a letter. I have the letter 'A' on my bed, my wardrobe and my kitchen cabinet.

This is the bathroom, which is not terribly exciting but still part of where I live. The water pressure in the shower is excellent, and that's really most of what I care about when it comes to bathrooms, so I'm good to go. My room also has a small table that Pai En mostly uses as her desk, which is fine because I prefer to sit on my bed anyway.

This is our kitchen, which is right across the hall and is used by 11 girls. My 'A' cabinet is right at the front right corner of that island. The kitchen has two ovens and stoves, two microwaves, one large fridge and one large freezer. There's a big table with several chairs, and two sofas arranged around a wide screened TV. The kitchens are all locked, and only the 11 of us have the code to get in, which apparently stops people from coming in after a night at the bar and stealing other people's food.

The other part about the rooms just invovles figureing out the weirdness that is the British electrical system. There are individual switches on each outlet and for each appliance, such as our heater and the towel dryer/warmer thing in the bathroom. But down on the switch actually means "on," and up on the switch means "off." Normally this is not a problem as you just hit the switch when you need the current lighting situation to change, and then you get th desired result. But when there are two switches, like there are in the kitchen, I am constantly hitting the wrong one.

There are other minor differences like this that catch me by surprise almost daily. For example, in order to walk into almost any business or building, you have to push to go in and pull to go out. More than once I have tried to pull open the door of a cafe, thought it was closed, and then had to go back once I figured out that it was just me and that the cafe didn't have some crazy owner who decided to close down at 2 p.m.

But on that subject, things do close down really early. On the High Street in Kensington, which is just round the corner from here, most of the clothing stores are closed by 7, and almost everything is closed by 8. Pubs, most of which close at 11 every night of the week, only serve food until 10 p.m. If you're hungry after 10, then you're mostly out of luck.

The biggest difference between here and home I probably mostly notice because I'm from the South. Southern hospitality/manners/kindness/whatever simply does not exist here! During the first weekend I had a rather nasty purple bruise from running my forearm into a doorknob, and it was all because I entirely assumed this other person would hold the door and not drop it on me. In museums and on trains people push and walk right in front of you, often directly between you and the painting you're looking at. No one says excuse me; no one says sorry; and there is no response if you say either of those things to them. I don't think it's because people are rude, people just don't have the same concept of rude that we do. They have no idea that what they are doing is elsewhere considered to be poor manners. But it is REALLY hard to adjust to.

In other news, I did laundry today. It was a little bit of an adventure, but not in a bad way. The only bad part was that to do slightly less than two weeks worth of laundry, it cost me $25. That is ridiculous, and it makes me further wish that I had studied abroad at a time when the dollar was actually worth something compared to the rest of the civilized world. It also makes me really excited about going to Rome where I can use the Euro. ($4 = 2 pounds = 3 euros) The other sad part about doing my laundry is that now everything I washed doesn't smell like home anymore. Of course things don't smell like cigarette smoke anymore either, but I think I even prefer that to this new clean scent that doesn't seem quite right.

So not a very exciting Monday, but I think I'm going to make up for it by going to Westminster Abbey tomorrow morning. I don't know if I'll get any pictures out of that trip, but I will definitely tell you all about it. Oh, and I added a new link for pictures to the link list all the way to the right on this page. If you click that it will take you to my Flickr page, which has more pictures than I put on here. Cheers!