Nott What You'd Expected...

Xenophobia, or, The Island Complex

Reading week continues to prove itself lazy and unproductive. Yesterday's flurry of typing, grading, and revising of Paidiea essays due at exactly 6pm proved to be too much for the lot of us, and following our lecture, a Weeds marathon concluded the night.

Aside from hilarious BBC24 coverage of the Election (and i quote: "President Bush, seen here wearing one of the biggest belt buckles in the world, gives US voters some words of encouragement), the only truly British moments came while in lecture (about the EU and British reluctance) and during some intense (yeah, intense) reading of Jeremy Paxman's The English, an assigned reading that has some actual application.

At the risk of this sounding negative and sappy, i'll apologize beforehand.... Really, our time here has been awesome, and i can't complain about too much- aside from the experience being much different than our 'red carpet' expectations, it has really been an amazing experience....
HOWEVER
The English are a curious breed. Standoffish, reclusive, pretentious, private, and aloof are words that one might use to describe the isolationist attitude that surrounds the Island, and as a foreigner in the country, i can relate. I speak for all of the flat (maybe?) when i say that we expected a warmer reception. I may have said this before, but something about the English obsession (infatuation, love of.., etc) American culture led us to believe that-as Americans- we would be welcomed with the same enthusiam that Hollywood, Starbucks, McDonalds, Paris Hilton, and the Scissor Sisters are here in the UK. Wrong. While accepting of most Western, Atlanticist ideals, actual foreigners are a different thing.
this is starting to sound whiney and negative.....i'll try to be more upbeat....
I'm not sure what my original intent was in this rant, but certain passages in my reading really hit home. Most striking was the idea of a 'need to be liked'... while us Americans are eager to make friends (assuming they approach us first), the English could care less if you like them. that's a huge generalization, but fundamentally true. At one point in Paxman's book, he makes the statement that "the only way to gain acceptance is to feign indifference"... that's classic England, encapsulated in a concise and extremely true statement.

I suppose i could go on, but to keep interest and readership up, i'll finish here: i guess with this knowledge in hand, taking a different approach to making friends is the first step... should i act like i could care less that someone wants to be my friend? is Paxman being hyperbolic, or is a cold shoulder the real way to make friends? eh, looks like a 7 month experiment looms ahead.....

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Otherwise, today so far has been pretty lame. I really need to get on this Geology field notebook, which still remains completely untouched, along with an Islam essay that could be done early to avoid later procrastination. Studying seems so foreign now, i can't imagine actually sitting down and reading some crap i would just assume skip over. In this Groundhog Day-esque existance we call life here at the flat, getting out or putting ourselves to the academic test is getting to be more and more of a struggle....

Finally, a PICTURE OF THE DAY- Aaron struggling to get inside, by means of crawling through the window. Unfortunately, he moved all of the knives on the magnetic holder over, and many of them fell into the toaster blade-side up.... at which point i told him to freeze, while i grabbed my camera. Because that's what friends are for.
note Brandon's hand in the window, still waiting to come back in from the bitter cold up on the roof.....

posted by Kevin @ 11:13 AM