Jesse Battilana and Benjamin Franklin, best friends forever

Hey there, Land of the Free. Another glorious week has passed in good old England, and like my endeavors in Carlisle last year, I have still managed to fail in finding even mildly appropriate footwear for the weather. Maybe if I wait it out, the weather will yield to the whims of my shoes. As expected, I had the pleasure of meeting many fine people this week, one of whom apparently recognized me from freshers week when (allegedly) I was “running around in bare feet shouting excitedly about Stone Henge or something.” This was at the comedy society meeting I attended for more of my personal cultural studies. Some of you, (Mom) may know from stalking every single one of my and my classmates’ Dickinson blog entries despite my incessant pleas for you to stop reading them, that over the past two months I have become ever increasingly baffled by the amount of cross-dressing in British entertainment. I am happy to report that the comedy society at UEA, too, makes humorous use of women’s clothing. There is also a magician in the club, pretty sweet. Thankfully, my strange accent and general existence is hilarious to other people because I did not understand about half of the English pop culture references in the jokes that people made or how to imitate a Geordie accent, but that’s okay.  

I’ve also finally managed to get into the classes I need so I was actually able to attend them all this week. American Autobiography is probably going to be the most hilarious thing ever if it continues in the manner that it did last week. Having been enrolled late, I also got the reading late, so when I discovered I had to read Benjamin Franklin’s entire autobiography in a very short amount of time, I was a little concerned. Then I remembered that everyone in the class is from England, and that I have the advantage of about 12 years of American History plus yearly family outings to the Franklin Institute (Ben and I go way back. I pretty much came up with the bifocals idea actually. He just made it popular). They were really scared to say mean things about him until I gave them the okay. I think I’m going to dress up as a Revolutionary War soldier the week of Halloween and insist that America invented freedom to see if anyone says anything.

Speaking of which, one of the community service organizations is throwing an American style frat themed party to fundraise this coming week. So after gathering my flat mates around and explaining as best I could what a frat and sweet frat bro were, one of them excitedly exclaimed “What are you going as? I’m going to be a gangster!” …I love American stereotypes.

This weekend was pretty eventful as well. I went out with the Frisbee team on Thursday night, when I was assigned my new team family. In addition to a whole mess of other everyday words I’m not allowed to say, I am no longer allowed to refer to my Frisbee mom by her real name; I must call her Mom at all times, or else some horrible Fight Club-esque fate will befall me. This tradition must absolutely be brought back to the Dickinson Frisbee team. Saturday and Sunday I got to explore the coast line and Norwich City Center, both which are even more awesome and exciting than I expected. I’ve also finally had fish and chips (and I own a pair of skinny jeans now. Yes, the transformation is complete. I will return with a monocle, top hat and silly English accent). With that in mind, I am going to close this post with a close examination of English condiment packets, all of which I had the compulsion to try with my fish. As opposed to your regular ketchup, mustard and maybe relish of you’re being fancy, England provides the following variety of packets: malt vinegar packets, brown mustard (it is actually dark brown), salad cream, mint sauce, and a suspicious looking packet labeled only SAUCE (also brown). Are the English perhaps more trusting of otherwise unlabeled packets which may contain radioactive materials? Is it a secret insider knowledge sauce that they use to ambush foreigners? Who knows.

Anyway, until next week, cheers (I still have no clue what that means. They say it for everything).