Being in England is a little like being in a mirror dimension; everything is almost the same as home, but just different enough so that you can't help but notice.

They call cigarettes "fags" and cell phones "mobiles." They spell tire "tyre" and curb "kerb." They call dessert "pudding;" there is a "pudding" section on menus, and people say to one another, "Have you had pudding yet?" in the dining hall, even on the days they are not serving actual pudding, which is all the days. It's not just the streets that go the wrong way; the light switches are on when they look off and off when they look on, and half the time you turn the light on by pulling a string dangling from the ceiling. Don't even get me started on the menagerie of incomprehensible currency. I know it's fucked up that dimes are smaller than nickels, but it's even more fucked up that two-pound coins are smaller than two-penny coins.

Of course, these are pretty trivial differences. No, I do not understand why they call drunk driving by the grammatically questionable name "drink driving," or why "kebab" refers more often to gyros than to kebabs, but I could theoretically learn to accept these things in time. Already I am used to the juice that comes in boxes like cheap wine.

The important things to compare are the social, political, and economic stuffs, a couple of which I'll get around to right...now!



Racism

It's hard for me to compare racism in the UK and the US directly, because I haven't really been in very many situations where obvious racism was likely to happen in the UK (or in the US, really, for that matter). What I do know is that only 7-10% of England's population is made up of ethnic minorities. In London, the most diverse place, it's 30%. Compare that with the US, where, according to Wikipedia, only 66% of people are non-Hispanic or -Latino/a whites, and in a few places, those whites are a majority minority.

Certainly there are a lot less Hispanics/Latinos here, and a lot more Middle Eastern people. I saw a woman wearing a niqab and her daughter wearing a hijab, which I've never seen in person in the US. Also, I didn't know what halal food was until I got to college, but here, halal restaurants are pretty common.


Munch munch munch.

Apparently the fact that the British had a less atrocious version of slavery than ours and no history of segregation makes it difficult to start a dialogue about race here. But maybe the fact that I can go to Ahmed's or Mehdi's kebab vans any time I want means that race has a certain level of visibility here. I suppose that has both negative and positive consequences. I dunno, I got all kinds of white privilege, and it's pretty hard for me to notice this kind of stuff in my own country, let alone in a country in which I've only spent a few weeks. Maybe I should move on to a topic about which I can speak with marginally more authority.


Environment

There are a lot of comparison points here.

Recycling is less prominent in the UK, but it still exists. They put much more of an emphasis on re-using grocery bags, which are made of recycled plastic in the first place. There is not a single public restroom (or should I say, "loo") with paper towels. They either use those annoying bacon dispensers or a weird cloth-towel-in-a-paper-towel-dispenser setup, which I think is pretty sweet, although it might be responsible for spreading germs and hitting me with the killer head cold I'm rocking right now.

The water pressure in showers is lower, but definitely satisfactory, which makes me strongly feel we should adopt it in the US. According to the program director here, the water pressure is lower because "water conservation is a very real concern here." Well, that's great, but then why do you have separate faucets (excuse me - "taps") for hot and cold water in your sinks? When I wash my face, I have to turn both faucets on and do a little hand-cupping gymnastics routine to avoid using water the temperature of ice or of molten lava. That means I use twice the amount of water I would use if there were a single faucet, which probably offsets all the water I save by taking my weak little showers.


Bad show, Britain!


If you were wondering if I got my paper done on time, yes, I did, thank you for asking. I also transferred out of that government/politics class into the social change one, which I think was a good decision.


Coming soon: Mirror Dimension (Part 2)!