England

Last week I went to England with my class (1SB, which means junior year (1) of the science track (S), along with a class of 1L (literature track), a class of 1ES (economic-social track), and a class of 1STMG (science and technologies of management). We were in two different buses, so it wasn't too crowded, although I did get extremely fed up with the slow pace and amount of waiting that always results from disorganized school trips and too many people who don't know what they're doing.

We spent the first day in London and saw the British Museum and a Museum of Natural History, neither of which were terribly interesting given the packets of worksheets we had to fill out and the sleep-deprived state we were in after the night crossing of the English Channel. Yes, we had rooms with beds, but I can assure you that not very many people slept.

After London, we drove to Warwick, where our host families were. I have heard that many English host families are extremely odd, because French schools pay these families to feed and lodge French students for a week, and thus they are sometimes seedy people in need of a little extra cash instead of the kind, educated, philanthropists that make up the majority of volunteer host families. I have to say that our family held true to form. My favorite moment in that house was when Julia (my BFF – best French friend – and roommate) opened a cupboard in our room and screamed.

Moral of the story? Never look in closets of people you don't know.

Our host was an elderly retired woman and, for the first half of the week, her middle-aged daughter who was back from Dover for a visit. I've heard most Brits come across as cold and overly proper, and conversely Americans seem like golden retrievers to Brits, that is, overly friendly and a little stupid. Our interactions followed this pattern pretty well. I was shocked that she didn't eat with us, cleared off the table, and acted like we were at a hotel, and I got the impression that she wanted to keep our socializing to a minimum. Oh well. We ate decently despite all I've heard about terrible English cuisine, and we had beds to sleep in and a shower, even though she insisted that we shower at night. It was certainly an experience that reminded me how lucky I am with my host family in France.

On Monday we went to Cadbury World, where I dressed up like a pirate

and otherwise made a fool of myself, and we toured the chocolate factory. As far as museums and factory tours go, it wasn't bad, because we got free chocolate. In the afternoon we walked all over Bournville to take advantage of the snow.

SNOW! 

For a California girl, even a measly few centimeters was pretty exciting. We had snowball fights all day, with even our adorable physics teacher participating.

Me and Julia:

 This is me trying to warm up my hands after a snowball fight:

I don't have any good pictures of the snowball fights because no one wanted to endanger their camera, but here's a picture of my adorable physics teacher with my two BFFs:

On Tuesday we drove several hours to Manchester, a gloomy industrial ghost-town of sorts that was a big deal back when England was a major textile exporter, but now there's not much of interest in Manchester. We went to the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI), and I can't say that was too interesting either. I like science, don't get me wrong, but it was a museum aimed for either a little younger or a little less educated than I. The one great thing about it was a skit put on for a group of elementary school British kids, that immediately drew the attention of all the French high school kids and we ended up doubling the size of the audience. It was to explain how trains work to little kids, under the form of a mean boss trying to educate a clueless worker who wanted to become a conductor. The clueless worker was one of the best comic actors I've ever seen – I really think he missed his true calling by working at a museum instead of being a stand-up comedian. He had the greatest facial expressions and had amazing slapstick skills, managing even to fall off the train looking convincing and comical without hurting himself.

The other great thing about MOSI was playing hide-and-seek in the trains with my friends, which meant we didn't fill out our worksheets at all, but we were already sick of spending our England trip complying to such busywork.

Wednesday was my 18^th birthday! We spent the morning at the Museum of Transport in Coventry, which was nice if you like old cars but I don't, and then in the cathedral, which was bombed out during WWII and rebuilt afterwards. In the cathedral there was a beautiful Boston piano that I was drooling over since it's been half a year since I last got to play. When someone mentioned to my physics teacher that I used to play piano for a church and was longing to play, he said “Hmm.... that would be a good birthday present, wouldn't it?” and wandered off to find the caretaker of the church. He was an extremely kind old gentleman with a great (very British) sense of humor, or humour I suppose: “Do you, by any chance, have your birthday exactly once every year?? Astonishing. Because you know, I am very old, and by now I seem to get TWO birthdays per year.” Long story short, I was soon seated at an open piano, and sat down and played the one thing my fingers remember how to play: the introduction to Bring Me to Life, by Evanescence. You can see in this picture my other BFF and roomie took (let's call her Rihanna, since all names in this blog are made-up) that everyone in my group had sat down in the pews to watch me.

Fortunately I hadn't even noticed them, or I wouldn't have been able to play anything at all, but suffice it to say that I was quite embarrassed upon looking up, realizing that I had an audience, and realizing I could play literally nothing else unless I had some sheet music in front of me. That was awkward kids, thanks for listening to my 30 seconds of playing...

After the cathedral, we had the afternoon free for shopping in Coventry in the snow! I was pretty excited that it was snowing. In the words of my physics teacher (translated, of course): “You don't ever get snow in San Francisco, do you?” I guess it may have been obvious by the way I was trying to catch snowflakes on my tongue and finding patches of unmelted snow to make snowballs with. Fortunately I've pretty much come to terms with making a fool out of myself. We took a group picture on the steps of the old bombed-out cathedral, and you can see that it's snowing, but it was warm enough that the first half-hour of snow just melted into cold slushy mud on the ground. I'm the idiot on the left who thought the picture was already taken and stopped doing the wave. And I have a snowball in my hand by carefully finding a bit of unmelted snow on some priest's tomb!

So, shopping – we went to Primark, which is the English version of something in-between Forever 21, Target, and Walmart, that is, reasonably fashionable garments in vast quantity and variety, but made very cheaply, of low quality, and costing so little you feel like you're stealing. In short, the perfect store for teenage girls. My own personal philosophy of clothes (in response to people who like buying high-end clothes that will last longer, and thus having to buy fewer of them) is that I am extremely hard on my clothes and will destroy them whether they're from Walmart or Neiman Marcus (that's a high-end store, right?), and besides I get bored of my clothes after a few years anyway and would prefer to buy new ones and waste less money overall on nice clothes. Anyway, so while Rihanna was buying out the entire store, I got myself a 1£ sweater among other nice cheap things and a birthday present for Sarah the other American, whose birthday is 5 days after mine. We went to a few other more upscale stores like New Look, that still had massive sales and were therefore not too expensive. New Look made my day because I met a cashier whose father comes from Sunnyvale, my city of origin! Our conversation went something like this:

Her (upon hearing our accents): Where are you all from?

Rihanna and Julia: France

Me: California

Her: Really? Where in California?

Me: Around San Francisco.

Her: Whoa! My dad comes from Sunnyvale.

Me: What?? Really? I'M from Sunnyvale!

It really made my day. Mostly I did not feel more at home in England than in France, even though I certainly had a refreshingly high level of confidence just going into Starbucks and ordering a coffee. (Yes! I still have a different accent than what they're used to, but at least I don't sound stupid now!) The different accents meant that I had to ask the English host family to repeat what they just said about as often as I have to ask French people to repeat themselves, and because I feel so at home in my host family in France, that meant England was not as refreshingly almost-the-US as I thought it might be. But it certainly was nice to find someone who actually knows Sunnyvale. As my mom says, San Francisco is just “some dinky little town to the north of us.” But it's actually a good point: San Francisco may be our “the City,” just like how for anyone in New York or New Jersey, “going into the City this weekend” means NYC. But the city of artists and hippies and social outrage and narrow European-style streets is actually a world away from the quiet, competitive, intellectually-elitist, technophile, suburban Silicon Valley that actually represents my home. //End tangent.

Here are my friends and I at Starbucks. Starbucks is even more expensive in England than in the US, but it was worth it. Chai latté, yum.

Oh and here's a picture of the weird lunch I got:

I was planning on getting some Subway, but seeing the pictures on the menu, it was clear that Subway wasn't at all like how it is at home – they only have soft white fast-food bread, and it looked more like McDonald's sandwiches than the garden of deliciousness that it is back home. So I ordered a meat pie from somewhere sketchier, and it would've been good if they hadn't given me four ladles of gravy on top. I guess I should really learn to say “Stop! That's enough gravy!” at some point, but I kept watching with fascinated horror to see when he would stop.

After shopping and Starbucks, we went home and had dinner. After dinner, there was no cake. If I were a host family, I never would've let an exchange student's birthday go by without cake, but I already mentioned she was a little weird. Then we went immediately to bed, obviously, without partying at all because we are good kids.

How does it feel to be an adult? Well, pretty good. February 13^th especially was heart-warming, because my classmates sung Happy Birthday to me (in English!), my teachers gave me a card, my friends gave me presents and sweet cards as well, and everyone really made me feel like a loved and accepted part of the class, which as an exchange student means I've succeeded, and as a human being makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Look! I have friends!

Otherwise? Nothing has changed in the short term. I'll continue to go to high school, continue to be under the responsibility and direction of my organization, my school, and my host family, and continue to not have adult superpowers. (Wait, you mean I don't get to know all the secrets of the universe upon turning 18? What is this BS? I thought adults had all the answers! What's the point of getting old if I don't become omniscient?)

But it actually does feel a little different. I have the right to do what I want to within legal bounds (except buying alcohol once I return to the States) and the right to make my own decisions. On legal grounds, I'm now on the same footing as adults, and feel that that will make a difference for me when adults disrespect me just because of my youth. One interesting thing about my recent delve into feminism is that I've never felt disrespected because of my sex, and therefore have wondered from time to time if this (feminism) is still an issue. But age-ism, something that no one writes books or holds protests for, is something I've been acutely aware of all my life. Have you ever noticed that adults have the “right” to be downright rude to children, even unprovoked? I'll take a recent example:

The other day, my host sister and I walked out of our high school through a different door than we usually use, the door next to the administration offices. The secretary immediately got up and yelled at us. This is a translation, but I'll do my best to not change the tone at all: “Excuse me??? [indignantly] Stop right there! Since when have students have the right to use this door?!? This door is only for teachers and parents, not children.” This was delivered in a tone of voice I would describe as angry, indignant, disparaging/derogative, and rather affronted. Now, imagine for a moment that the door was only for staff, and that parents weren't allowed through. What would the secretary have said if a parent walked through the door? Probably “Excuse me, sir/ma'am, but this door is actually only for staff. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but if you could go around to the other door that's located on the other side of the building, that would be much appreciated.” The parent would get the benefit of the doubt, while teenagers are always instantly seen as delinquents, or deliberately defiant and disobedient. The truth is that we didn't know we weren't supposed to use that door, and that we've never done anything against that secretary. She had no right to be so rude to us, and it was only socially acceptable because we're kids. I'm not even going to go into the fact that the only reason students are barred from using that door is to lower us, to make us less human than the adults. Just focusing on the actions of the secretary will do for a blog post that supposedly was about England, not ageism.

Nothing has changed since – I still look like a 16-year-old. But now I'd really like it if I could start fighting against this ageism, this very common discrimination that has never been seized by the media. A simple “Excuse me?” and request to be treated more politely might go a long way, you never know. The knowledge that, according to the law, I am now just as much a person as any other human being on the street is valuable just because of what it does for my confidence. I'll let you know how this plays out in real life. //End tangent.

Thursday was Stratford-Upon-Avon, which was the most uneducational potentially educational event of the entire trip. Stratford is very commercialized and touristy, and is more about the gift shops than about Shakespeare. What I particularly disliked was that there was no mention whatsoever about the mystery of who Shakespeare actually was, although after a quick consultation of the all-knowing wikipedia gods (link) I discovered it's a much less credible conspiracy theory than I had always thought. I had heard of the “Who was Shakespeare really?” question as an educated person's acknowledgement that we don't really know, but apparently it's a less well-supported theory than that. Anyway, the gift shops were okay, and there was a river with really aggressive geese, and we took another group picture:

That night we had fishsticks, which is one of the very few foods I simply cannot force myself to eat. I'm not a picky eater and am willing to eat foods I don't like, just because for me it's not the end of the world (nourishment is nourishment), but I simply can't eat fishsticks. Ick.

On Friday we said a breezy goodbye to our host. I heard in other families they got hugs or touching farewell sentiments, but we formally thanked her for her hospitality and walked out the door without looking back. It's a shame I didn't get along with her, because I had really been looking forward to discussing things in my native language. I would've been ecstatic to fall into a family interested in politics or philosophy or linguistics or anthropology or history or any of the many humanities subjects on which I can speak passionately, if not expertly. But alas, we did not exchange any more meaningful ideas beyond her telling us that we weren't allowed to take our showers in the morning.

We spent Friday in London, seeing Buckingham Palace,

 the changing of the guard, and the poor dehumanized soldiers who make up the guard.

Most of us have heard before of this phenomenon – the soldiers who aren't allowed to smile or react in any way to the tourists milling around and taking pictures with them.

I completely didn't expect this, but seeing this young soldier up close just made me sad. What a job it must be to have to endure that all day: the endless colors and noise and laughter turning around you, but being isolated behind a poker face and the interdiction of interaction. It's dehumanizing, the way people swarm around him and take pictures with him, acting like he's an object. I think that's why it's fascinating to us, because it's a human being acting like an object, but to me it was depressing and not funny, sort of a sad metaphor for life. We try to interact, but we're all really complex human beings trapped behind our own faces, unable to fully communicate who we are to others. Knowing that a little autism streak runs in the family, I make an active effort to remember to put myself in others' shoes and remember that behind every face is a brain and a bundle of emotions as well. Sometimes it feels like staring infinity in the face, when you are in a crowded room or walking down the streets of a big city and realizing that all of this meatbags around you are actually entire people with entire lives. It's a scale of consciousness that boggles the mind.

Credit: asofterworld.com

Luckily for me, I wasn't the only one who felt this way, and in the back of the crowd found myself next to a classmate who said “Kinda depressing, isn't it?” I'm not the only one.

The changing of the guard:

And I discovered that marching band has ruined me for life. I was completely unimpressed by the marching band and the guard. Look at those horn angles! Despicable! And they used lyres! Dear lord, what would Mr. Burn say... (For those of you non-band kids, lyres are the little music stands they have pinned to their instruments. And lyres are cheating. You should be able to memorize your music!) The music was pretty good, especially the piccolist, but her posture was shameful and her hand position even worse. She held it with flat, lazy fingers, as if it were actually heavy. (No piccolo jokes allowed, but it's the lightest instrument in the band, lighter than a baritone mouthpiece.) The guard impressed me even less. They couldn't dress their lines and didn't have even spacing, either. Their movements with their guns were synchronized with the beat, but they obviously hadn't decomposed their movements or learned to subdivide in their heads, because the beat synchronization didn't go beyond that: it was fuzzy and sloppy. I was seriously disappointed. Buckingham Palace attracts an enormous number of tourists, and the guard can't even learn to have the precision of a high school marching band? What is the world coming to? Daemon, my former drill sergeant, would have flayed them alive and then made them do 200 pushups if he had seen such lax behavior.

The rest of our day in London was spent at a boring slavery museum and walking through the city to see famous things like Big Ben.

That night we ate at a diner. Fishsticks. Again.

The ferry on the way home was significantly less restful, as we all slept on the floor in one big room instead of our 4-person rooms we had on the way over. I have no problems with sleeping on the floor – a useful legacy of growing up with backpacking – but we didn't have blankets and it was freezing.

All in all, I wasn't sad at all to leave England. It was nice to speak freely to strangers when ordering coffee or asking for a cigarette (not for me; I don't smoke), but English people are standoffish and unfriendly and I was sick of boring museums and not being able to spend my time in England as I wanted to. I will never go on a school trip like that again, since I am so used to travelling on my own and having much more freedom to do what I want that school trips make me feel frustrated and confined. I am pretty sure that I will never live in England, and never understand how my mother survived her 5 years in Southampton. It was a great trip for bonding with friends and getting up to mischief, but I was really glad to get home. And the fact that I can call this “coming home” is something special too. Not everyone can feel like they're coming home when they return to their host family.

It also made me rethink my hatred of not having perfect French. Yes, it's true that I can't make my points as clearly and well-said as I'd like, and that this takes away from my already-low level of confidence. But in England, the fact that we speak almost the same language but not quite means that we picked up on bizarre social vibes from each other. Little things in their words and expressions that are probably perfectly normal I perceived as unfriendly or odd, and I'm sure the reverse was true as well. So maybe the fact in France it's already obvious that I'm a foreigner and come from a completely different cultural background actually helps in mutual charity and understanding.

Or, in other words, “Ils sont bizzares, les rosbifs, eh ?” as my frisbee coach said. “Rosbif” – roast beef – is what the Froggies call the Brits. So yes, the Brits are indeed pretty weird.

Some other pictures that didn't make it into my giant wall of text:

 Fancy red telephone booths!

 The state of our room before packing up to go home...

 Me with some friends

Me climbing on a thing near Buckingham Palace, like a cool kid

 Me at a "bar" in a museum, chatting up the "bartender"

So there goes my England trip. Tomorrow I'm leaving to go skiing again, so next week you can keep your eye out for a Méribel, Take 2 post and a book review post of Half the Sky, a book on feminism my aunt sent me for my birthday. I don't intend to turn this blog into a book review blog and I certainly don't have time to write reviews of all the books I read, but I've been spilling my recent ruminations on feminism onto this blog so I thought it would be appropriate.

Halfway

On June 8^th, in four months and one week, I will meet my parents and my brother at the Nantes train station – the same one I've passed through every time I travel elsewhere in Europe. One week later, we'll pack up my things and head over to Germany to visit some very good family friends of ours. A week later, we'll head down south again, to the Alps, possibly Venice, possibly the Mediterranean, and who knows what else. On June 27^th, my parents will fly home in a normal fashion, while I am required to pass through Paris, Reykjavik, and Boston on Icelandair before proceeding on to San Francisco due to travel agent shenanigans. From there on out, my plans are fuzzy, but my host sister is coming to visit me for half of July and all of August, and I'd really like to take a roadtrip across the States to college.

The halfway point was January 22^nd. I feel like I should have passed the halfway point a long time ago, like I should be almost done. It might well end up feeling like that – I rather hope these next four months and one week pass much more quickly than the first half did. After all, I have never lived a longer week than the first week I was here, and never a longer month than the first month. It took until November for time to speed back up to its normal steady tumble.

A lot of the other exchange students I met have gone home. In a way, I envy them, because I know that I was happier at home and that I've already learned most of what I have to learn in France. My language acquisition is plateauing even though it never really stops. I've seen the differences and similarities between the French and Americans, and I prefer Americans. I've learned what it's like to be a foreigner, and although that's valuable information, I prefer being a native. But at the same time, I can't really imagine going home right now. Going back to my high school after living abroad would be weird, like aging backwards. Fortunately I'm a senior this year (well, technically I'm in my second year of being a junior, and I'll skip being a senior) and won't have to go back to my high school – even though, for the most part, I liked it at Homestead. Anyway, it wouldn't feel very complete, to go home and take back up the threads of my life like I hadn't just dropped them and ran. And 4 months left is practically nothing, especially with a week in England, a week of skiing, and 3 other weeks of vacation to look forward to.

And with all those exchange students who left after semester 1, there's a whole new crop for semester 2. I'll never meet them in person, but I read their blogs. I was discussing with Sarah, my American friend, how we can't believe the exchange students who write all about “I love my new school! It's so exciting and interesting and I have so many new friends who are awesome lalala! And my host family is adorable and I have kittens and I never want to go home France is so much better than the US wooo!” And all the people who told us before we left “You're never going to want to come home! You'll have a blast.” No one ever talks about how hard it is. Which is one of the reasons I write honestly about my experiences, for future exchange students. Maybe Sarah and I are the anomalies. Maybe everyone else really does have 100% fun and happiness and never wants to go home. But I'm here to tell you that at least for me, some days are really great and others really suck and there'll be moments of homesickness and maybe if you're me even more moments of just plain not liking how things work in France. And at this halfway point, I'm not unhappy, and there are a lot of good things in this experience: my host family, whom I adore, Ultimate Frisbee, and the travelling I get to do from time to time. But I have to admit: I think a lot about the day when I'll get to go meet my family at the train station. When I go running, I think about the day when I'll take my dad with me to show him my favorite 7 kilometer circuit. (Not that I'd ever admit it to him. Hi Dad! I miss you. ;) ) I look forward to coming home, waking up in my own bed, hanging out in Serra Park with my friends, and especially making my own food for breakfast and lunch. (I used to make curry at least once a week, but in France spicy food doesn't exist.) Study abroad is a good thing to do. I recommend it. But it's good to be halfway. Halfway means I survived 5 months already; I can survive the last 4 as well.

I thought of a blog idea that will hopefully be entertaining: Send me stereotypes about the French or about France, and I will bunk or debunk them!

Here are your French stereotypes of the day:

1) French people smell.

Status: FALSE

They shower just as often as we do, and are shocked and disgusted to learn that most Americans don't wear perfume. Perfume is an essential element of the French grooming regimen.

2) French women don't shave their legs.

Status: FALSE

Not only do they shave, but from a very young age, and often in high school they wax their entire bodies and pluck their eyebrows and other horribly painful-sounding procedures. Beauty is important in France, and we all know that “beauty is pain.”