Dippy Jones Across the Pond: Blogging Assignment #1

Isn't this lucky? We just got our first blogging assignment and funnily enough, it covers basically everything I've had on my ever growing list of Things I Need To Talk About And Haven't Yet. A perfect opportunity!


So here goes!


I realized, last Sunday I think, that I haven't actually gone over where I am and what I'm doing. I really just jumped into the thick of it. But there have been so many other things to post about, I just haven't gotten to it.


I am currently at Keele University next to Keele Village, in Staffordshire, UK. I am working for their equivalent of York International, it's called CIED (Centre for International Exchange and Development). They had initially wanted an intern to update their educational materials, but they needed that intern over the 2nd semester; when the relevant activities were actually happening. So that's why they hired Ron. He's been here, doing my job for me, since they found out the internship wasn't what they had expected. I think I've talked about him before, but just in case I haven't; Ron is a York student as well! Well, a former one. He used to be in Film, but then switched to biology and after having done a study abroad opportunity at the real University of York (ie the one here in England) he decided to come live here.


So if he's been doing my job, what am I doing now, you may ask? Promo videos. And lots of them. You see CIED wants to better promote itself to the students here at Keele, and to better promote Keele to foreign students considering coming to England. So I'm making A LOT of promo videos. Unfortunately, it's been nothing but cascades of technology failure so far. This makes me one sad panda :(


But anyways, I've got practically my own office (especially now with Nina gone, it's really just Fanny and me in there; sometimes Ron, if he comes in) though it's meant to be the Peer Advisor Study Abroad Resource Room, so we get a lot of people wandering in with questions we can't answer.


There are of course a lot of differences, and a lot of similarities between Toronto and here. Especially the traffic! As everyone knows, Britain is a terribly backwards country, so backwards they can't even drive on the right side of the road! Driving on the left, made all the more terrifying by being peppered with roundabouts that you go the wrong way about. I will not drive here. Period. But it has given me time to test my hypothesis.


You see, living in Vanier we had a few British students, and after doing that awkward we're-trying-to-pass-one-another-but-keep-stepping-to-the-wrong-side dance, you know the one, a few times with them; I created my hypothesis. That awkward dance, is almost exclusively born from traffic based confusion. It so rarely happens with me and another Canadian, or American, but it happened almost every time I tried passing one of the British students in Vanier. So the test, if you're in Britain and it happens whenever you pass anyone without making a conscious effort to pass on the British side; that's what the problem is. 


And I was right!


The first bit, nearly every person I passed, we did that awkward dance. But if I made a conscious effort to behave as though I were driving a car on their roads, all of a sudden, the problem wasn't a problem anymore! Since then, I've been experimenting further. You can avoid the phenomenon all together by avoiding eye-contact and barrelling through; but who wants to do that?

The UK has a pretty decent public transit system; there are the trains of course, the marvellous, oh-so-cheap trains (relative to Canada, of course) but there are also the busses, and in cities like London, the Tube. I've only seen double decker busses in London and Edinburgh so far, but I haven't exactly seen the biggest sample. One thing I've noticed about transit, particularly here in Stoke, is how slow it is. Everyone takes their time to get onto the bus, the driver takes each fare individually and provides change, when you ring the bell for your stop, you sit until the bus stops and the driver waits for you to get up and leave. Not like Toronto, where you better have exact change ready and when you want off, you'd better be at the door when the bus stops or too bad for you! The UK is so much more civilized about it. You probably won't miss the bus if you're arriving just on time, because even if everyone's on/off the bus who wants to be, the driver might sit there just a mite longer. They also have variable fares based on where you're going, which is quite nice. Every trip's the same low price for me because I buy multi-ride tickets, but if you're just going a few stops down the line, your price will reflect that, it's nice.


The food is good here too. The fruits and veggies seem cheaper here, and they're more focused on the local and organic trends as a rule. They're also really good with the gluten-free business, and much to my eternal happiness, they don't use HFCS! If you don't know, High Fructose Corn Syrup is basically, in a kind of hyperbolic way, the reason the US is so fat. But seriously, look into it; you're eating enough of it everyday. That shit's in EVERYTHING! ... but not here! <3


Other than that, I have access to pretty much all the same food and restaurants as back home, except KD. Oh my beloved Kraft Dinner! Realm of cheesy deliciousness! *sigh* But seriously, the restaurant scene is pretty similar but it's dominated by some primary themes: Pub Food, Indian Food and "takeaway" (chinese etc). There are of course Italian restaurants, but they aren't so common, there are some nicer looking chinese places, but it seems that all the classy looking food places are Indian, the rest are Pub Food, and then there's takeaway places, either in the form of chinese food, or a chippy (fish n' chips shop). I haven't been to any takeaway places, but I love places that serve Pub Food, and I've been to one Indian place (for those of you who remember the late night food in Cardiff experience >.<).


And that brings me to people. I don't know about Toronto having a "keep you [sic] head down and move" context; I smile at people on the street just as much there as anywhere else, brief hellos particularly when its so early in the morning there aren't many others out and about. I find it's the exact same way here. People tend to be even friendlier once my accent peaks their curiosity, but it really isn't that different. Though I wonder, just looking at me, do people assume I'm just another Brit, or is there something that gives me away. Even just a little?


I'll have to find someone to ask....