Future Ex-Pat

We’ve only stayed two nights here but I feel like a week has passed. Still, I really don’t feel like I’m in a foreign country. I’ve bought a new SIM card so I can make cheaper calls to the US and have decided to use the internet café across from the hotel.

We’ve spent most mornings being talked at by the stout little British man named Andrew who runs our program and a glamorous woman named Lynn who wears neat pleated skirt suits and reminds me of Julie Andrews. Yesterday we were visited by a member of the House of Lords, a Life Baron, who I’d love as a professor or grandfather. He gave us an enlightening talk, describing the British political system and social issues in between extended sessions of loud nose-blowing into his handkerchief. I’ve decided that I’d be content to become a British ex-pat. The British have a culture of irreverence and post-Christianism that is really appealing. Abortion is hardly an issue, nor capital punishment; the outcry in response to the latest act allowing gay civil unions to have the same rights as marriages was, “Oh, whatever.” 68% of young people in national polls list David Beckham as the most influential character in their life; only 2% name Jesus and 1% God. I could go on and on, but I already love this place.

The evenings we’ve had free. Most adults here hit the pubs right after work at about 5 and drink themselves drunk until 8; since we’re young and wild Americans, we haven’t gone out until 8 and stay out way late until the pubs close at 11. Everything’s expensive: a pint of the cheapest beer is the equivalent of about $5-$6. We’ve gotten carded everywhere because apparently we look under 18, but we flash our pearly American smiles that they’re so envious of as we hand them our IDs and they let us right in. I’ve been hanging out with a different group of people every night. Since tomorrow we don’t have to wake up, at all, I’m hoping to go to a club with some girls and actually stay out past midnight.

Today we saw a play by Emile Zola called Therese Raquin. Horrifying, terrifying. I wanted to shut my eyes through the entire second half but couldn’t. Not that it was graphic or gory, it was just, disturbing. It was French, after all, nothing less to be expected than the ripping apart of human existence.