Burned by England

So, I've been super positive about my life here so far.  And it's pretty hard not to be, meeting such amazing people and living in such a beautiful place.  But it isn't all fun and games here.  There are many ways that this country (and life outside the Amherst bubble in general) is designed to screw with a naive American girl like me, and I thought that you might enjoy reading a little bit about it:

1. Sides of the road: Just a refresher, they drive on the left here.  In the US, they drive on the right, and therefore my "survival instinct" to look to the left when crossing the street has almost gotten me killed multiple times since I've been here.  I'm not sure what'll happen when I start riding a bike...

2. Automatic locking doors: Maybe this isn't an England thing, but just a non-Amherst thing, but my door automatically locks behind me.  This was kind of a problem the other night when I went to the bathroom in my PJs and returned to find my door locked.  My next door neighbor was kind enough to lend me shoes and a coat to walk to the porter's lodge to get an extra key.  The porters made quite a bit of fun of me.  They were entitled.

3. Getting wet: Just about every day here involves getting wet.  Sometimes it's expected, like when we went punting, and other times it is a gorgeous sunny day and then it suddenly starts raining.  I hope my shoes dry quickly because right now I don't really know which ones I'll be able to wear tomorrow.

4. Metered everything: Stuff here is "metered."  That means they keep track of how much electricity, heat, and internet you use so they can charge you accordingly.  The free internet limit is 1 GB, which is actually quite a bit unless you, say, try to download an episode of Bones from iTunes.  Then you get back from the bathroom to find it's done downloading and you've been charged 16 quid (pounds, for laymen) for overuse of internet.

5. "Crawling" (and drinking in general): so this is a term I never heard before I got here.  Basically I have learned that "crawling" means walking around to different locations, and drinking copious amounts of alcohol at each of them.  We had a "Hostel Crawl" last night at my college (Churchill), where we stopped at each of the graduate houses and played drinking games.  Each hostel was themed a different country with a different liquor for each (UK = gin and tonics, Australia = beer, Russia = vodka, etc.  My hostel was Mexico = tequila, thank you RC seniors for teaching me how to drink tequila so I didn't make a fool of myself!).  Needless to say this didn't end well for many people, although I stayed relatively fine throughout the night.  Of course, afterwards we went to the pub.  It was raining.  We got wet.

6. Banks: Apparently when you cash a check here, your bank takes 5 business days (which do not include Saturday or Sunday) to process it before you get your money.  This is why I still do not own sheets or a bike.

7. Two tap sinks: This makes no sense to me.  The sink in my room (yes, I have a sink in my room) has two taps: one for freezing cold water, one for scalding hot water.  What if I want in-between-temperature water?  Yes, I know, you're supposed to fill the basin up, but that is a pain and it would make so much more sense to just have one tap.

I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones I've thought of so far.  Funnily, despite all of the difficulties, I still love living here.  I guess when you are around awesome people being wet or broke or locked out of your room in the middle of the night don't bother you so much.