Photo of Underground entrance outside Waterloo Station, Sept. 2009
Titled: Sunday, Lazy Sunday
It was dumb really, the things I didn’t bring. I think of the dollar stores in Charlotte, N.C., the 99 cent bins in Target, the buy-one, get-one free specials in Dollar General. Clothes pins. Black socks. Pencils. Extra toothpaste. Bobby pins. Hand towels. Thinking I would buy them here, when the exchange rate for the dollar is so bad – my previous European experiences didn’t prepare me for that. Here, in London, I am a practically a pauper. Not the first or last, but the American currency in my pocket is lessened by nearly half. I counted pennies as an undergraduate, and I can do it again.
Laying in on Sunday – the lazy day. It’s cold. The radiator in the flat doesn’t quite get hot – warm, at best, like a cup of tea left to cool too long. It grows cold in regular intervals. Must see someone about that.
It’s different here, in London, than my time spent in Italy. I almost don’t feel like I’m in a foreign country – the students around me thus far have all been Americans, the language an accented version of my own, and the high-speed connections make the world a smaller place. When I lived in Italy, it was still in the time of dial-up; WiFi didn’t exist, and even if it did, it didn’t exist in Dorf Tirol, a remote corner of the Italians Alps. Not that it would have mattered; I didn’t have a laptop then anyway. It was an expense I couldn’t afford. There were cell phones, of course, the permanent attachment of the 2000’s, but I couldn’t afford one that would call America either. So it was me, a pen and paper, a book of stamps, and the occasional mile hike to the village from the castle to use a pay-phone that chattered at me in Italian while I counted my Lira for phone cards.
England, London, has been good to me in that respect. I have a mobile that calls overseas, I have my trusty MacBook to pen my words, and a little invention called Skype will very well be the salvation of my relationship to Mr. B during my time here. Without it, I wouldn’t have a way to talk to him for hours upon hours and then some.
Technology, and lazy Sundays, are a wonderful thing.
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