Girl Meets World

It’s my first two weeks of being in London and so far, I’m LOVING it! This is my first time really immersing myself in a new culture as opposed to being a tourist. This experience, so far, has been very challenging however, I think in a few weeks I’ll slowly get more and more adjusted to life in London. One night, I started talking to my roommate Renee to see what she felt about her experience in London so far, and to see if we had similar thoughts about the overall culture.

Renee Cunningham, mixed American from Connecticut who is a media studies and production major at Temple.

Like myself, Renee decided to study abroad to experience and live in a new place and culture. She was also eager to visit places she’s never been to before. As soon as Renee got to London, she noticed that the people are very stylish and the city overall is very clean compared to America. She was also observant of the fact that British people, unlike Americans are very reserved and keep to themselves. This was something she was not used to considering Americans are quite the opposite. She noted the most difficult thing she’s faced so far is the slang that is used here in London. She specifically said the phrase “you alright” is strange because here it means “what’s up?” when in America it’s more like “are you okay?”.

Kesh, a 25 year old Black Briton

It’s been really great connecting with my fellow American student from Temple, but I’ve also been meeting some British people. This is one of the top things I wanted to do since being here so I had an excuse to return to the UK. I met Kesh, who has only been to the United States once before when we was two years old in 1995. I was surprised to find out that he hasn’t visited the United States since he was a child. However, when I asked him about it, the first thing he said was that he wanted to visit New York in the next few months. His initial perception of Americans are that they seem to be ignorant. I didn’t find this surprising because it seems that British people are more aware of what is going on in America. He also felt that Americans eat “disgusting” food. He referred to the fact that we do not have strict laws as to what goes into our food. I also was the first American student he’s met, so he doesn't have any preconceived notions about American students yet.

Kesh’s biggest problem communicating Americans is the fact that our senses of humor differ. I also find this one of the hardest things when communicating with the British. It makes it difficult to make friends with people who live here because you can’t have a light conversation. He does not have trouble understanding American accents, which I found surprising because I sometimes have an extremely hard time understanding British accents, especially when they speak very fast. Kesh and I spoke about other differences between Americans and Britains such as the slang, TV shows, and singers.

It was a really cool experience to find out what a British thinks about Americans and I thought it was pretty interesting to see that British people are just as curious about Americans as we are about the British. I’ve gotta go to a museum for my advertising class but until next time, cheers!