It took an hour, maybe a day
I already miss my guitar. This is because I finally have time to play it. Time is all I needed. Unstructured time for more than two or three days in a row. And here it is...
On Wednesday I made my first venture to campus. It was the first day of International Student Orientation. I had no idea how to get there, but I'd heard tale that the number 29 bus would pick me up in front of the dorm and take me straight to campus. So I stand at the bus stop, staring at the map like a mad woman trying to verify this and figure out how much fare is. This, I think, is where cities fail their tourists. They have all these helpful (read: impossible to decipher) maps and fail to give you the most crucial information of all: how much money they want for the ride. My mistake was thinking this would all be easier by speaking to the driver. I ask him how much for the ride, and he asks where I'm going, and I think (stupid!) that the best thing to say would be the tube station nearest to where I'm going, Euston Square. Driver tells me I have the wrong bus, and to take this other bus that stops there. Dazed and confused as I am, I believe him and get off. Yes, 'tis true, another bus does stop there and terminate at Euston Station. I wanted to go by Euston SQUARE station which flanks campus and this bus I just got off goes right by. I am utterly confused and apparently also the only one who knows what to do. Fantastic. Of course, if he'd actually answered my question, instead of following up my question with another question, I would have been informed that the ride was £1.20. All bus rides are £1.20. That's all I bloody wanted to know and I could have paid and sat down and gotten off where I wanted.
Instead, I slunk off the bus, and started walking towards the tube stop at Camden Town, thinking perhaps I could be illuminated there, as the El station in Chicago was always the place to go for fare info and to pay. Well, that didn't work out quite as well as it should have either, but I won't bore anyone. Suffice to say I overpayed for the tube and rode it for one stop and got up and walked in circles until I finally found campus.
By now it's just past 11, and it's three and a half hours until the festivities begin. What they are, I am still unclear (but can you guess?!) as the brochure is unenlightening. But I have brought my laptop, foolishly believing I might find a stray unencrypted wireless signal to connect to the internet. I find a bench overlooking a lovely green quad, marvel at the gigantic, imposing campus architecture, and consider taking myself for a tour. At that moment, someone slightly familiar walks past. It's Robyn! At least, I think it is. I call out, and yes! Yes, it is!! Someone I know! Oh, glorious day!! Robyn had contacted me after I made a post on the UCL discussion board, and we were both happy to have found someone from the midwest going to library school here. She had visisted some friends in Chicago, and came by the Newberry one day where I met her officially. Very nice girl! She has just arrived that day, just a few hours before, and is clearly exhausted. But we're happy to see each other, and we go around the corner for a sandwich and catch up. By the time we get back and resituate ourselves in the quads to wait, another queue has formed. It has snuck in, quietly without notice, until it was too big to control. This is what it's like people!
So, we go stand and wait in a large mob that doesn't move an inch for about a half hour. I've run out of things to say to Robyn, lovely girl as she is. I just don't know her well enough, and I'm too tired to try and be entertaining. She's clearly exhausted and probably nauseous from the flying, so you could see how I might be cautious. Once our conversation had deteriorated to "[long pause] Did your inflight meal have a dessert? Yeah? Mine too. [another long pause] What color are your bags? Mine, mine were red. Yeah," she finally declared enough and went to sit down. I haven't seen her since. Thank you queue for ruining another relationship!
Thankfully at the precise moment that Robyn slunk away to safety, I looked up and saw Chad Nelson standing high and scanning the crowd. I waved, he saw me, and came to join me in the queue of death. I tried to warn him, but he said it was fine as long as he was with someone he could talk to, which is why he was looking for me. I tried to warn him again, but he would have none of it. Chad worked not this summer but last as an intern at the Newberry cataloging some atlases. He was a fun guy to talk to back then, and when Bob K. told me he was ALSO going to UCL for library school, I was delighted. The odds, I tell you! The odds! So I emailed him, we met up for coffee to remind us who the other was, and since he had already spent six months in London, he was quite helpful. So we caught up as the queue slowly bottlenecked into a tiny door. Chad informed me that he had gotten here early too, and had made it inside to find that there was this long line, and then another long line just after it. I can't believe we've all been made to get here a day early just to stand in very long lines! This better be very important!
Of course, it isn't. It's about 4pm when we finally make it inside (I got here at 11, remember, and started queuing up at 1:45 or so), just to find out they're passing out booklets! Nothing absolutely crucial. Nothing that makes or breaks us the next day! One of the booklets tells us when we're supposed to come the next day for enrollment, but as I find the next day, that doesn't matter either! It's all just more of that don't get raped by minicabs, here's another map of campus crap. And for the next few days, that stuff is littering campus and will be for the next few weeks or so. I'm so glad I got here early, folks! We're told we could stand in another line to get our tickets, but that they'll still be there at 5 when the line has gone down, although at 5:15 they'll be doled out to whomever didn't register for tickets and wants them. So Chad and I opt for nourishment at one of the cafes in the union. I buy a banana, Diet Coke, and water. I'm dehydrated, tired, and assume I also need vitamins. I'm really on my feet's bad side now, despite having worn comfy bright white tennis shoes and looking like a moron. In three seconds it's 5pm, and we're racing back to get our "tickets" which ends up being a large box of white stickers for the reception that evening. Anyone could get them. I ask if there are more tickets, and she says no, that's it. All my dreams that everything I did today was important have been dashed!
It's an hour until this supposed reception, and Chad says he won't be able to make it because he has to go meet some people to see about a flat. But he has time to kill also and we walk south towards the British museum. I'm sore and slow, and it takes longer than the map suggests it should, but it's fun to see all the lovely buildings, old homes that are situated on green squares. I imagine what it was like there one or two hundred years ago. As we get to the museum, we realize it's closing. I get brave (I'm a bit camera shy in every sense of the phrase) and take a photo though.
That is first and currently only photo of London I've taken with my sparkly new digital camera. I am very bad about this, as you can see.
After sitting and enjoying the view for a few minutes, we trudge back to campus. I see a little of Bloomsbury, which is lovely. Lots of bookstores and cafes, and warrants a return so I can get a fuller sense. I think it's the exact sort of neighborhood the Newberry should live in, instead of being surrounded by more and more condos. Washington Square park deserves to be surrounded by Georgian townhouses with coffee shops and bookstores on the bottom floors.
When we get back to campus, Chad takes off and we promise to meet the next day before we're meant to be at campus for enrollment. I wander over to this reception, which is just a crush of people in a hallway. However, there is free champagne and lots of lovely caterers who enjoy topping off your glass. There was food too, but most of the crush centered around where I hear tale it might have been. I make my way to the edges, not wanting to offend by whatever sweaty odor I've picked up that day, or poke people with my heavy red backpack (very, very heavy at this point). I stand where there's more room and scour the crowd, hoping Robyn was around somewhere, but thinking that if she even tried to make it through the lines, than she probably gave up and went back to the dorm to sleep.
Suddenly, a very tall, good looking, and very young guy turns around and introduces himself to me. His name is Lucas, and he then introduces me to a group of American and German students, all roughly 18, who all live together in Ramsay Hall. Ramsay Hall is apparently where they put all the good-looking, social Aryan people so that they don't have to walk too far to campus, thus freeing up time to comingle and breed and prolong the race. Anyhow, I know I'm a fright. Badly dressed for comfort, and I have not stopped sweating since I arrived in London (my glands detest humidity). Clearly, this boy's father taught him to be kind to charity cases, but I'm glad for people to talk to, and it's fun to meet Germans. I meet three over the course of the evening, who don't know each other but are all here to study Physics because it's apparently the best or second best place to do so in the world. I make some joke asking if they've been sent here by their government, but they don't or pretend to not understand me. The girls seem nice enough, but young and flirty, and I feel like Jane Austen watching them. I complain a little about how far away my dorm is despite asking for a close one, and one of the girls offers her floor. She said come to Ramsay, that's where the parties are. It'll be fun. I feel accepted and the champagne makes me giddy. But I've seen these types before, though for the first time I am older than them and wiser and know what's coming. The next day I see the same two girls, and smile thinking I'm being polite. They pretend to not recognize me.
Everyone I was chatting with has disappeared, so I wander around and decide to check out. I hate meeting new people and only will if they come up to me first. Besides, the sun is setting and I want to get to the bus before it's completely dark. I haven't managed to take the bus yet, but at least on this end they have machines by all the bus stops so you can buy your tickets first to ease congestion while boarding. The 29 comes, I flash my ticket, grab a seat, and ride home in style. I have mastered the bus. Except there are no pulley strings like on Chicago buses to request a stop, and the bus is so crowded, I can't see the scattered red buttons that accomplish the same thing. I'm too afraid to ask the people around me after finally feeling like I'd mastered something. I want the feeling to last, even if it's a charade at this point. Fortunately, someone else wants to get off at my stop and I make it back without trouble.
The day should have ended at that point, but that's where it got good. I decided that there must be more to this dorm than a bunch of hallways with rooms. There had to be somewhere good to hang out, or even some place to do your laundry. There's a large fire map in the foyer and that's what I use, unable to believe that I have to use a firemap to find my way around my dorm. I find the laundry room (£1.60 to wash!!!), and discover that smack in front of me is a tv room. It is unoccupied. I race upstairs, change out of my smelly clothes and put on some slippers, and come back downstairs to watch something. Anything! When I come back down there's a woman sitting in my tv room (my tv room!) fiddling with the remote control. Well, no one is stopping me from my tv, so I waltz right in and plop down. This woman looks at me and asks me if I can figure this damn remote out. It doesn't work. Well, hello my speciality! The minute she opens her mouth, I can tell she's Irish. I get the remote to work, and together we discover that we have five channels, all showing crap. Five. That's it. These people don't understand my needs at all. So, we give up and just start to talk. I find out her name is Sinead (no kidding!) and I think she's from around Dublin. She's had a shit time getting set up in the dorm, reception at Ifor Evans was rude to her and told her less than they told me, and having problems setting up a bank account. Apparently the English really do treat the Irish as third class citizens. Another girl comes in, from China, and as we talk, Sinead discovers even this girl has had no trouble. She's incredulous that she lives an hour away and can't open a bank account, and someone from China has no troubles at all. Sinead rants and raves, and it's a roaring good time. As everyone talks, I realize it's the first time I've ever been somewhere where I'm the only American. That my lifestyle and citizenship and what I'm familiar with is different than everyone else's. I get to say fun things like, "Well, in America, it's like this" because it's not painfully obvious to everyone else. I also learn that Sinead knows more about American politics than I do, and I get to see what someone else's perspective is. Sinead thinks George Bush is just daft, but Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern are just plain corrupt and evil, while most everyone I know thinks Bush is daft and evil, Tony Blair is pussywhipped, and who's Bertie Ahern?
The Chinese girl's tale is harder to swallow. She (who's name I either didn't get or can't remember) talks of a government that's more worried about it's image to Western Civilization to actually care how it's run. She marvels when we talk of comedians that mock our government because they are not allowed to speak out. Sinead asks if it's just the way it is there and if people don't care. She says no, they feel it strongly and it's frustrating. She is allowed to go to school, but it's difficult to get the paperwork and she has no hope of staying longer than she's meant. They are very insistent that students have to come back. She also talks of widespread piracy, and how Friends and Sex and the City are gigantic hits in China. Sinead and I laugh at the thought of millions of Chinese women trying to emulate characters from Sex and the City. I feel as if I should tell her that's a bit extreme and not exactly an accurate portrayal of your typical American woman.
So I spend hours like this, feeling wonderful. It's exactly what I came here for. To not be sheltered. To meet people who have done things. Sinead is a medical anthropologist and has spent time in southeast Asia, meeting the poorest of the poor. She knows and has seen things I have never even thought to think about. It made me feel good that I'm here, even if it's just England and it's just Library Studies. And she's real. She's a real person who speaks her mind and doesn't take crap. I need to be around that and I hope we become good friends. Plus, I need someone to show me around Ireland!
Off to meet Monica for tea at the British Library!
On Wednesday I made my first venture to campus. It was the first day of International Student Orientation. I had no idea how to get there, but I'd heard tale that the number 29 bus would pick me up in front of the dorm and take me straight to campus. So I stand at the bus stop, staring at the map like a mad woman trying to verify this and figure out how much fare is. This, I think, is where cities fail their tourists. They have all these helpful (read: impossible to decipher) maps and fail to give you the most crucial information of all: how much money they want for the ride. My mistake was thinking this would all be easier by speaking to the driver. I ask him how much for the ride, and he asks where I'm going, and I think (stupid!) that the best thing to say would be the tube station nearest to where I'm going, Euston Square. Driver tells me I have the wrong bus, and to take this other bus that stops there. Dazed and confused as I am, I believe him and get off. Yes, 'tis true, another bus does stop there and terminate at Euston Station. I wanted to go by Euston SQUARE station which flanks campus and this bus I just got off goes right by. I am utterly confused and apparently also the only one who knows what to do. Fantastic. Of course, if he'd actually answered my question, instead of following up my question with another question, I would have been informed that the ride was £1.20. All bus rides are £1.20. That's all I bloody wanted to know and I could have paid and sat down and gotten off where I wanted.
Instead, I slunk off the bus, and started walking towards the tube stop at Camden Town, thinking perhaps I could be illuminated there, as the El station in Chicago was always the place to go for fare info and to pay. Well, that didn't work out quite as well as it should have either, but I won't bore anyone. Suffice to say I overpayed for the tube and rode it for one stop and got up and walked in circles until I finally found campus.
By now it's just past 11, and it's three and a half hours until the festivities begin. What they are, I am still unclear (but can you guess?!) as the brochure is unenlightening. But I have brought my laptop, foolishly believing I might find a stray unencrypted wireless signal to connect to the internet. I find a bench overlooking a lovely green quad, marvel at the gigantic, imposing campus architecture, and consider taking myself for a tour. At that moment, someone slightly familiar walks past. It's Robyn! At least, I think it is. I call out, and yes! Yes, it is!! Someone I know! Oh, glorious day!! Robyn had contacted me after I made a post on the UCL discussion board, and we were both happy to have found someone from the midwest going to library school here. She had visisted some friends in Chicago, and came by the Newberry one day where I met her officially. Very nice girl! She has just arrived that day, just a few hours before, and is clearly exhausted. But we're happy to see each other, and we go around the corner for a sandwich and catch up. By the time we get back and resituate ourselves in the quads to wait, another queue has formed. It has snuck in, quietly without notice, until it was too big to control. This is what it's like people!
So, we go stand and wait in a large mob that doesn't move an inch for about a half hour. I've run out of things to say to Robyn, lovely girl as she is. I just don't know her well enough, and I'm too tired to try and be entertaining. She's clearly exhausted and probably nauseous from the flying, so you could see how I might be cautious. Once our conversation had deteriorated to "[long pause] Did your inflight meal have a dessert? Yeah? Mine too. [another long pause] What color are your bags? Mine, mine were red. Yeah," she finally declared enough and went to sit down. I haven't seen her since. Thank you queue for ruining another relationship!
Thankfully at the precise moment that Robyn slunk away to safety, I looked up and saw Chad Nelson standing high and scanning the crowd. I waved, he saw me, and came to join me in the queue of death. I tried to warn him, but he said it was fine as long as he was with someone he could talk to, which is why he was looking for me. I tried to warn him again, but he would have none of it. Chad worked not this summer but last as an intern at the Newberry cataloging some atlases. He was a fun guy to talk to back then, and when Bob K. told me he was ALSO going to UCL for library school, I was delighted. The odds, I tell you! The odds! So I emailed him, we met up for coffee to remind us who the other was, and since he had already spent six months in London, he was quite helpful. So we caught up as the queue slowly bottlenecked into a tiny door. Chad informed me that he had gotten here early too, and had made it inside to find that there was this long line, and then another long line just after it. I can't believe we've all been made to get here a day early just to stand in very long lines! This better be very important!
Of course, it isn't. It's about 4pm when we finally make it inside (I got here at 11, remember, and started queuing up at 1:45 or so), just to find out they're passing out booklets! Nothing absolutely crucial. Nothing that makes or breaks us the next day! One of the booklets tells us when we're supposed to come the next day for enrollment, but as I find the next day, that doesn't matter either! It's all just more of that don't get raped by minicabs, here's another map of campus crap. And for the next few days, that stuff is littering campus and will be for the next few weeks or so. I'm so glad I got here early, folks! We're told we could stand in another line to get our tickets, but that they'll still be there at 5 when the line has gone down, although at 5:15 they'll be doled out to whomever didn't register for tickets and wants them. So Chad and I opt for nourishment at one of the cafes in the union. I buy a banana, Diet Coke, and water. I'm dehydrated, tired, and assume I also need vitamins. I'm really on my feet's bad side now, despite having worn comfy bright white tennis shoes and looking like a moron. In three seconds it's 5pm, and we're racing back to get our "tickets" which ends up being a large box of white stickers for the reception that evening. Anyone could get them. I ask if there are more tickets, and she says no, that's it. All my dreams that everything I did today was important have been dashed!
It's an hour until this supposed reception, and Chad says he won't be able to make it because he has to go meet some people to see about a flat. But he has time to kill also and we walk south towards the British museum. I'm sore and slow, and it takes longer than the map suggests it should, but it's fun to see all the lovely buildings, old homes that are situated on green squares. I imagine what it was like there one or two hundred years ago. As we get to the museum, we realize it's closing. I get brave (I'm a bit camera shy in every sense of the phrase) and take a photo though.
That is first and currently only photo of London I've taken with my sparkly new digital camera. I am very bad about this, as you can see.
After sitting and enjoying the view for a few minutes, we trudge back to campus. I see a little of Bloomsbury, which is lovely. Lots of bookstores and cafes, and warrants a return so I can get a fuller sense. I think it's the exact sort of neighborhood the Newberry should live in, instead of being surrounded by more and more condos. Washington Square park deserves to be surrounded by Georgian townhouses with coffee shops and bookstores on the bottom floors.
When we get back to campus, Chad takes off and we promise to meet the next day before we're meant to be at campus for enrollment. I wander over to this reception, which is just a crush of people in a hallway. However, there is free champagne and lots of lovely caterers who enjoy topping off your glass. There was food too, but most of the crush centered around where I hear tale it might have been. I make my way to the edges, not wanting to offend by whatever sweaty odor I've picked up that day, or poke people with my heavy red backpack (very, very heavy at this point). I stand where there's more room and scour the crowd, hoping Robyn was around somewhere, but thinking that if she even tried to make it through the lines, than she probably gave up and went back to the dorm to sleep.
Suddenly, a very tall, good looking, and very young guy turns around and introduces himself to me. His name is Lucas, and he then introduces me to a group of American and German students, all roughly 18, who all live together in Ramsay Hall. Ramsay Hall is apparently where they put all the good-looking, social Aryan people so that they don't have to walk too far to campus, thus freeing up time to comingle and breed and prolong the race. Anyhow, I know I'm a fright. Badly dressed for comfort, and I have not stopped sweating since I arrived in London (my glands detest humidity). Clearly, this boy's father taught him to be kind to charity cases, but I'm glad for people to talk to, and it's fun to meet Germans. I meet three over the course of the evening, who don't know each other but are all here to study Physics because it's apparently the best or second best place to do so in the world. I make some joke asking if they've been sent here by their government, but they don't or pretend to not understand me. The girls seem nice enough, but young and flirty, and I feel like Jane Austen watching them. I complain a little about how far away my dorm is despite asking for a close one, and one of the girls offers her floor. She said come to Ramsay, that's where the parties are. It'll be fun. I feel accepted and the champagne makes me giddy. But I've seen these types before, though for the first time I am older than them and wiser and know what's coming. The next day I see the same two girls, and smile thinking I'm being polite. They pretend to not recognize me.
Everyone I was chatting with has disappeared, so I wander around and decide to check out. I hate meeting new people and only will if they come up to me first. Besides, the sun is setting and I want to get to the bus before it's completely dark. I haven't managed to take the bus yet, but at least on this end they have machines by all the bus stops so you can buy your tickets first to ease congestion while boarding. The 29 comes, I flash my ticket, grab a seat, and ride home in style. I have mastered the bus. Except there are no pulley strings like on Chicago buses to request a stop, and the bus is so crowded, I can't see the scattered red buttons that accomplish the same thing. I'm too afraid to ask the people around me after finally feeling like I'd mastered something. I want the feeling to last, even if it's a charade at this point. Fortunately, someone else wants to get off at my stop and I make it back without trouble.
The day should have ended at that point, but that's where it got good. I decided that there must be more to this dorm than a bunch of hallways with rooms. There had to be somewhere good to hang out, or even some place to do your laundry. There's a large fire map in the foyer and that's what I use, unable to believe that I have to use a firemap to find my way around my dorm. I find the laundry room (£1.60 to wash!!!), and discover that smack in front of me is a tv room. It is unoccupied. I race upstairs, change out of my smelly clothes and put on some slippers, and come back downstairs to watch something. Anything! When I come back down there's a woman sitting in my tv room (my tv room!) fiddling with the remote control. Well, no one is stopping me from my tv, so I waltz right in and plop down. This woman looks at me and asks me if I can figure this damn remote out. It doesn't work. Well, hello my speciality! The minute she opens her mouth, I can tell she's Irish. I get the remote to work, and together we discover that we have five channels, all showing crap. Five. That's it. These people don't understand my needs at all. So, we give up and just start to talk. I find out her name is Sinead (no kidding!) and I think she's from around Dublin. She's had a shit time getting set up in the dorm, reception at Ifor Evans was rude to her and told her less than they told me, and having problems setting up a bank account. Apparently the English really do treat the Irish as third class citizens. Another girl comes in, from China, and as we talk, Sinead discovers even this girl has had no trouble. She's incredulous that she lives an hour away and can't open a bank account, and someone from China has no troubles at all. Sinead rants and raves, and it's a roaring good time. As everyone talks, I realize it's the first time I've ever been somewhere where I'm the only American. That my lifestyle and citizenship and what I'm familiar with is different than everyone else's. I get to say fun things like, "Well, in America, it's like this" because it's not painfully obvious to everyone else. I also learn that Sinead knows more about American politics than I do, and I get to see what someone else's perspective is. Sinead thinks George Bush is just daft, but Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern are just plain corrupt and evil, while most everyone I know thinks Bush is daft and evil, Tony Blair is pussywhipped, and who's Bertie Ahern?
The Chinese girl's tale is harder to swallow. She (who's name I either didn't get or can't remember) talks of a government that's more worried about it's image to Western Civilization to actually care how it's run. She marvels when we talk of comedians that mock our government because they are not allowed to speak out. Sinead asks if it's just the way it is there and if people don't care. She says no, they feel it strongly and it's frustrating. She is allowed to go to school, but it's difficult to get the paperwork and she has no hope of staying longer than she's meant. They are very insistent that students have to come back. She also talks of widespread piracy, and how Friends and Sex and the City are gigantic hits in China. Sinead and I laugh at the thought of millions of Chinese women trying to emulate characters from Sex and the City. I feel as if I should tell her that's a bit extreme and not exactly an accurate portrayal of your typical American woman.
So I spend hours like this, feeling wonderful. It's exactly what I came here for. To not be sheltered. To meet people who have done things. Sinead is a medical anthropologist and has spent time in southeast Asia, meeting the poorest of the poor. She knows and has seen things I have never even thought to think about. It made me feel good that I'm here, even if it's just England and it's just Library Studies. And she's real. She's a real person who speaks her mind and doesn't take crap. I need to be around that and I hope we become good friends. Plus, I need someone to show me around Ireland!
Off to meet Monica for tea at the British Library!
posted by Lauren Matson | 1:33 PM
2 Comments:
Wise move being too cool for the flirty german kids. Once you adopt the continental aristocratic accent and marry colin you'll be well on your way to being the new Madonna. Actually, who are we kidding. You're already the new Madonna.
Anyway as I'm now without cable I very much appreciate the comedic relief from across the pond. Who needs Laguna Beach when you've got Laurenadoren. Keep it coming-- you know us Americans--we have a short attention span. And who the hell is Bertie Ahern?
You know, I've never actually read Helen Fielding, but somehow I imagine that if Bridget Jones were actually an American girl coming to London to go to Library School, that her books might read something like Lauren Goes Looney in London.
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