notes on an arrival
Sep. 2nd, 2010 11:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenIt's a humid thirty-three degrees in Ithaca tonight. I, foolishly, live in an apartment which has thick carpets, soft furnishings, brick walls, and no air conditioning. I say this to set the scene; I am draped over a sofa feeling rather like a languishing whale.
It's also September. I said I wouldn't write, until September. I had that eerie experience of talking on the phone to someone, in September, when I was August, and I have been here three weeks, and maybe I can sit still long enough to write this. Three weeks! It feels rather like I've never lived anywhere else. Oxford is a long-ago, rain-soaked dream. I hated Pattern Recognition, William Gibson's last novel, but it had one insight I liked: air travel moves you too fast. When you reach the new place, you're washed out and translucent because you've left bits of yourself behind, and you have to wait until they catch up.
There's more to it than that, though. If you're in a place where no one knows you, it all falls apart rather - you tell the people you left behind, I'll be there in spirit, and in the meantime all the people you meet say, what's your name where're you from, and you tell them, and you both know about the years of detail, the solidity of who a person is, that you can't convey except with time, and you've lived in this place three weeks. It makes people into ghosts, or rather, into outlines, waiting to be filled in. I called Shim at ten o'clock at night, in a supermarket - where else? - and told him this, a little tearfully in an aisle marked "British and Irish food". He said, you like pink wine, and you never met a cat you didn't like. It helped.
I'm in my second week of classes, and have a brief respite over Labor Day weekend. The class registration process was initially a nightmare and got easier with time, and now I am registered for two law school classes, one colloquium, and one cross-listed political theory seminar. The constitutional theory colloquium is fabulous; it's got six students and two faculty members in it, and cheerfully degenerates every time into baseball metaphors and people being angry about Dworkin. It's sharp, and keeps my interest. So does conflict of laws, which is like obscure legal theory writ large and litigious. It makes my brain hurt, but in the good way. The others... I am not so sure of yet, one because I think I don't like it and the other because it's a on a break for two weeks.
In some ways, my background serves me very well - having been through both the Oxford political philosophy papers, specifically, and the tutorial system more generally, the so-called Socratic method is not a shock to my system. I'm also comfortable with theory, with how to think philosophically, in a way the JD students aren't, because of having had Balliol's idiosyncracies ground into my head when I was eighteen. But at the same time... I am not used to so many classes, so much formal assessment, so much written policy, response papers what the hell are they, final exams, what. I guess I'll get used to it. In the meantime, I try not to talk.
What next? Culture shock. It's a shock. Everyone told me, Britain and America may seem similar on TV but they're really not, I smiled and nodded and didn't quite believe - I believe you now. I do. Food shopping notwithstanding, there are two flavours of it, and the first one is just life. Life, in this brave new world where I can't drive, write a cheque, post a letter, flag down a bus. I can't pick up social cues; I can't read accents and pin down region/background, I'm not sure when I'm being snubbed. Other people take me seriously when I'm trying to be funny. After a bit I gave up trying to be funny and am now cultivating an arch humourlessness.
(My cohort help with this, because they're mostly international students. One of them told me this morning about an encounter she'd had with a stranger at a bus stop. "You speak very good English," said this person, "for someone from South Africa.")
The second flavour of culture shock is professional. American law began diverging from English common law about three hundred years ago. Yes, I know you knew that. But it can be rocking along, just the same - then someone says something about faith and full credit, and I'm lost. Precedents are incredibly recent; I keep forgetting that "judicial review" does not mean what I think it means; and most ridiculous of all, in the US they appear to pronounce the "v" in Marbury v. Madison. I meanwhile have no appreciation for the adversarial nature of good honest American litigation. I mean. Small things. And yet. And yet.
The short version: I am a long way from home and culture-shocked, I'll get over it.
Here are some things I like:
-My apartment. It's a small, one-bed apartment in Cornell's north campus. It has a teeny-tiny kitchen, teeny-tiny living room, teeny-tiny bathroom, a quite-comfortable bed, a hideously ugly sofa. I have my pictures and postcards up, and a wilting sunflower in a pot on the table. I love it very much; I think sometimes that maybe I should have chosen to live with other people, but mostly I come through my door and think, ahhh, this is nice. My upstairs neighbours are three Indian guys who are clearly waiting for someone to come along and make a sitcom about them; they lie around on the grass reading thousand-page engineering textbooks and adore each other homoerotically. When my smoke alarm goes off for no reason at all, they come patiently downstairs and fiddle with it for me. It's good.
-New Yorkers, and how weird they are about Wegmans. A late-night scene on the last city bus to the south: me, reading quietly in the back of the bus, three girls, probably undergrads, somewhere near the front. At length it becomes clear that while they are all three freshmen, one of them is an Ithaca native, another is from somewhere else in New York state, and the third has had the temerity to be from Virginia, and therefore her two friends are taking her to Wegmans to show her what she's been missing all her life.
"Don't try and compare it to your, like, non-Wegmans grocery stores," said the Ithaca native authoritatively. "Just don't, okay?"
At which point I gave up and started laughing hysterically. Bear in mind that this was a Saturday night, the last bus out, they are freshmen, and this is freshers' week. I mean. "I have this strange feeling I'm in a bizarre one-act play," I said, very quietly, and then the Virginia girl looked up and said, "Are you from South Africa?" and this was the same night I cried on Shim in front of shelves of Dairy Milk and Colman's mustard.
-Collegetown Bagels. It's the only eating establishment of any note in Collegetown, and it has the same place in Cornell's collective consciousness as G&Ds does in Oxford's. Cream-cheese with raspberry-jalapeno-jam bagel. Sounds revolting. I think I've had four, this week. They also have, oh, amazing sandwiches, and they cater all the law school's events so I'm intimately familiar with their pumpkin cream slices. Also, they pronounce my name right. Small things.
-Deer. A mother and three foals live outside my apartment. By which I mean, I could reach out and touch them. They gambol about in the moonlight, and flutter their eyelashes flirtatiously at me when I'm waiting for the bus in the morning. Not in Kansas any more, yeah.
-Netflix. Where has this been all my life. (Okay, yes, right here.) My subconscious immediately latched onto Buffy as comfort-watching - I'd have thought QI, or Doctor Who, or Jeeves and Wooster, or something, but then it came to me that Giles is my favourite and that choice suddenly made a lot more sense. Next up is 84 Charing Cross Road. Are you getting the theme? I'm getting the theme.
In a fortnight I'm going to NYC to see![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
macadamanaity, gamesiplay and the_acrobat. I'm looking forward to it so much; it will be such a comfort to be with people who've known me half my life. And in two months Shim visits, and by then I want to have places to take him, things to show him, people to introduce him to. I'm doing okay, I'm still here.
It's also September. I said I wouldn't write, until September. I had that eerie experience of talking on the phone to someone, in September, when I was August, and I have been here three weeks, and maybe I can sit still long enough to write this. Three weeks! It feels rather like I've never lived anywhere else. Oxford is a long-ago, rain-soaked dream. I hated Pattern Recognition, William Gibson's last novel, but it had one insight I liked: air travel moves you too fast. When you reach the new place, you're washed out and translucent because you've left bits of yourself behind, and you have to wait until they catch up.
There's more to it than that, though. If you're in a place where no one knows you, it all falls apart rather - you tell the people you left behind, I'll be there in spirit, and in the meantime all the people you meet say, what's your name where're you from, and you tell them, and you both know about the years of detail, the solidity of who a person is, that you can't convey except with time, and you've lived in this place three weeks. It makes people into ghosts, or rather, into outlines, waiting to be filled in. I called Shim at ten o'clock at night, in a supermarket - where else? - and told him this, a little tearfully in an aisle marked "British and Irish food". He said, you like pink wine, and you never met a cat you didn't like. It helped.
I'm in my second week of classes, and have a brief respite over Labor Day weekend. The class registration process was initially a nightmare and got easier with time, and now I am registered for two law school classes, one colloquium, and one cross-listed political theory seminar. The constitutional theory colloquium is fabulous; it's got six students and two faculty members in it, and cheerfully degenerates every time into baseball metaphors and people being angry about Dworkin. It's sharp, and keeps my interest. So does conflict of laws, which is like obscure legal theory writ large and litigious. It makes my brain hurt, but in the good way. The others... I am not so sure of yet, one because I think I don't like it and the other because it's a on a break for two weeks.
In some ways, my background serves me very well - having been through both the Oxford political philosophy papers, specifically, and the tutorial system more generally, the so-called Socratic method is not a shock to my system. I'm also comfortable with theory, with how to think philosophically, in a way the JD students aren't, because of having had Balliol's idiosyncracies ground into my head when I was eighteen. But at the same time... I am not used to so many classes, so much formal assessment, so much written policy, response papers what the hell are they, final exams, what. I guess I'll get used to it. In the meantime, I try not to talk.
What next? Culture shock. It's a shock. Everyone told me, Britain and America may seem similar on TV but they're really not, I smiled and nodded and didn't quite believe - I believe you now. I do. Food shopping notwithstanding, there are two flavours of it, and the first one is just life. Life, in this brave new world where I can't drive, write a cheque, post a letter, flag down a bus. I can't pick up social cues; I can't read accents and pin down region/background, I'm not sure when I'm being snubbed. Other people take me seriously when I'm trying to be funny. After a bit I gave up trying to be funny and am now cultivating an arch humourlessness.
(My cohort help with this, because they're mostly international students. One of them told me this morning about an encounter she'd had with a stranger at a bus stop. "You speak very good English," said this person, "for someone from South Africa.")
The second flavour of culture shock is professional. American law began diverging from English common law about three hundred years ago. Yes, I know you knew that. But it can be rocking along, just the same - then someone says something about faith and full credit, and I'm lost. Precedents are incredibly recent; I keep forgetting that "judicial review" does not mean what I think it means; and most ridiculous of all, in the US they appear to pronounce the "v" in Marbury v. Madison. I meanwhile have no appreciation for the adversarial nature of good honest American litigation. I mean. Small things. And yet. And yet.
The short version: I am a long way from home and culture-shocked, I'll get over it.
Here are some things I like:
-My apartment. It's a small, one-bed apartment in Cornell's north campus. It has a teeny-tiny kitchen, teeny-tiny living room, teeny-tiny bathroom, a quite-comfortable bed, a hideously ugly sofa. I have my pictures and postcards up, and a wilting sunflower in a pot on the table. I love it very much; I think sometimes that maybe I should have chosen to live with other people, but mostly I come through my door and think, ahhh, this is nice. My upstairs neighbours are three Indian guys who are clearly waiting for someone to come along and make a sitcom about them; they lie around on the grass reading thousand-page engineering textbooks and adore each other homoerotically. When my smoke alarm goes off for no reason at all, they come patiently downstairs and fiddle with it for me. It's good.
-New Yorkers, and how weird they are about Wegmans. A late-night scene on the last city bus to the south: me, reading quietly in the back of the bus, three girls, probably undergrads, somewhere near the front. At length it becomes clear that while they are all three freshmen, one of them is an Ithaca native, another is from somewhere else in New York state, and the third has had the temerity to be from Virginia, and therefore her two friends are taking her to Wegmans to show her what she's been missing all her life.
"Don't try and compare it to your, like, non-Wegmans grocery stores," said the Ithaca native authoritatively. "Just don't, okay?"
At which point I gave up and started laughing hysterically. Bear in mind that this was a Saturday night, the last bus out, they are freshmen, and this is freshers' week. I mean. "I have this strange feeling I'm in a bizarre one-act play," I said, very quietly, and then the Virginia girl looked up and said, "Are you from South Africa?" and this was the same night I cried on Shim in front of shelves of Dairy Milk and Colman's mustard.
-Collegetown Bagels. It's the only eating establishment of any note in Collegetown, and it has the same place in Cornell's collective consciousness as G&Ds does in Oxford's. Cream-cheese with raspberry-jalapeno-jam bagel. Sounds revolting. I think I've had four, this week. They also have, oh, amazing sandwiches, and they cater all the law school's events so I'm intimately familiar with their pumpkin cream slices. Also, they pronounce my name right. Small things.
-Deer. A mother and three foals live outside my apartment. By which I mean, I could reach out and touch them. They gambol about in the moonlight, and flutter their eyelashes flirtatiously at me when I'm waiting for the bus in the morning. Not in Kansas any more, yeah.
-Netflix. Where has this been all my life. (Okay, yes, right here.) My subconscious immediately latched onto Buffy as comfort-watching - I'd have thought QI, or Doctor Who, or Jeeves and Wooster, or something, but then it came to me that Giles is my favourite and that choice suddenly made a lot more sense. Next up is 84 Charing Cross Road. Are you getting the theme? I'm getting the theme.
In a fortnight I'm going to NYC to see
macadamanaity, gamesiplay and the_acrobat. I'm looking forward to it so much; it will be such a comfort to be with people who've known me half my life. And in two months Shim visits, and by then I want to have places to take him, things to show him, people to introduce him to. I'm doing okay, I'm still here.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2010-09-03 04:14 am (UTC)Also, hi from another college town not too far away. It will get less weird, I promise. Plus, we're coming into what is, hands down, the best time of year in upstate New York. It's not so hot that you start to melt if you look out the window, and not so cold that you need snowshoes to get to class. Plus there are apples everywhere.
In all seriousness, though, I'm glad you're adjusting. As far as having a good American academic experience goes, Ithaca's one of the best places to be.
no subject
on 2010-09-03 09:01 am (UTC)Also, why can you not post letters?
no subject
on 2010-09-03 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2010-09-05 01:18 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-09-05 01:19 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-09-05 01:20 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-09-05 01:45 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-09-05 09:54 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-09-05 07:05 pm (UTC)You could ask to see a previous year's final exam paper, just as a model for your planning.
no subject
on 2010-09-05 10:03 pm (UTC)You will get there, you really, really will
<3
no subject
on 2010-09-03 04:32 am (UTC)*ahem*
OMG GO TO ALADDIN'S!
*ahem*
*hugs* I'm sorry the culture shock has been disconcerting, though it's also really fascinating seeing my culture through your eyes (I had a milder version of this while spending this summer in Canada - less different from the US than Britain, which almost makes it more disconcerting, oddly)
Glad things are going okay. Here's to more in that direction!
*internet hugs*
no subject
on 2010-09-03 04:34 am (UTC)I love this, and the next paragraph. You've written about this feeling so beautifully.
Different profs want different things in response papers, so trust me, none of your classmates know what the hell they're doing with them either. For the first one--and granted, this was in literature; law may be different--I tended to try and pick a piece of the reading and connect it to something I knew from before, and natter on about their similarities and differences. Sometimes I would try to take a piece of an essay and take it to a logical conclusion using another text. Hopefully, the prof will give you feedback so that you'll know what to concentrate on for the next one.
Oh, grocery shopping. I remember nearly breaking down in tears when, halfway through my year in Exeter, I finally stumbled across Reese's peanut butter cups in Woolworth's. (Uh, if I remember correctly, that was also the day I went down to get drugs for my first sinus infection, and an arsonist setting fires along High Street had wound up closing Boots, so I didn't get my drugs. I was maybe a bit on edge that day already.)
Deer, yes, they are everywhere. I remember one night at Kenyon I was walking to an evening seminar, and stumbled across a herd (well, okay, four) NO LESS THAN TEN FEET FROM ME. Then they ran away in front of me, and I nearly had a heart attack. I know someone from near Ithaca who got Lyme disease from a deer tick, so wear lots of bug repellent when you go out in the woods, and check in the creases of your knees, elbows, groin, etc. for ticks when you come back inside. It's mostly a summer thing, and not all that common then, so I hope I didn't just freak you out, but my friend really had a bad time of it with the disease, and now I'm super cautious even though they aren't around much where I am. [/PSA]
I am so excited to be reading about my country from your perspective. :)
no subject
on 2010-09-03 04:41 am (UTC)(oh god we're in the same time zone. This is just so magical to me.)
You people don't pronounce the "v." in legal cases? What is this, what even is this.
I don't have air conditioning either. Let me tell you, I've lived through a lot of East-Coast summers in my time, but never without AC, and this is horrible. It kind of makes me want to cry all the time. Instead I take off all my clothes the minute I walk into my apartment, turn on a cold shower, and then stand in front of three fans until I dry. (1) It's effective. (2) That was TMI.
Your upstairs neighbors sound charming and perfect (my cohort also has two guys, whom we call the Bro Brothers, who adore each other homoerotically a lot but are Straight, Dammit, Straight), and I love the freshmen girls declaiming on Wegmans.
Hint: Americans often don't get British humor--you would be shocked by how many I know who say they categorically dislike British TV comedy--but everything you say with a British accent sounds intelligent and sophisticated. Everything. This is truth.
In conclusion:
it will be such a comfort to be with people who've known me half my life.
IONA DON'T SAY THAT, I AM DISGUSTED THAT WE ARE SO OLD.
But seriously, I can't wait to see you, and I feel the same way. Actually I starting crying a little when I read that sentence, and I don't know why.
...okay, ACTUALLY I started crying when I typed that bit about being in the same time zone, and haven't yet stopped, and okay I do know why: wine.
no subject
on 2010-09-03 04:43 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-09-03 05:08 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-09-03 05:50 am (UTC)Maybe you should write a sitcom about your neighbours... I'd watch.
I had to google wegmans to find out what it was... And Wikipedia tells me this: The Fairfax, VA store is the highest-volume store. In defense of Virginia girl.
British folk are just as bad about Tescos, though. I was dragged to Tescos in Prague because it's amazing and British and Tescos or something ("Can we go look at an art gallery? Pleeeeease?") and I *really* didn't get it ("I am in Hell. Why are we here?"), but it clearly meant a lot to my traveling companions.
Mm... the bagels sound spectacular.
You are still here, and in a fortnight, yes, yes!
no subject
on 2010-09-03 06:07 am (UTC)Ticks also like to get as high up on us as they can. As long as the subject of lyme has been started I will say this: Check your ears. Like every night. Lyme sucks.
Its funny how food grounds us in a new place. That may be what the preoccupation with grocery stores is all about.
Glad you are ok
no subject
on 2010-09-03 06:50 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-09-03 06:52 am (UTC)I am sorry about the culture shock and hope it gets better - I've never really felt it when I've been away, but then, I've never been without some sort of also-new groupmates who at least are all as clueless and adrift as I am. I imagine having to navigate the newness would make it a bit worse. At least your local grocery store has an English/Irish foods section! Here the only ethnic foods are Mexican, pan-Asian, and Jewish, which I doubt would do the trick.
Also I hope all the Americans in your vicinity are behaving themselves like adults. I don't know why but every time one of my foreign friends comes here I basically want to call every American in the country and tell them to be good in front of company.
Erin
no subject
on 2010-09-03 08:33 am (UTC)Oh gosh, that drove me mad about America and Canada! Serious, serious dent to the self-esteem and self-image, not being able to make people laugh.
I always found the worst bit of a new place was a month to six weeks in, and then suddenly, you have a few people to can totally rely on and relax around, and it's a second home. Good luck.
no subject
on 2010-09-03 08:55 am (UTC)Americans can be... wow, I can't actually think of an inoffensive word to call them. Depends on how oblivious they are to the rest of the world outside America. I hope the culture shock passes quickly -- mine didn't until about six months in, it was ridiculous. By the time six months rolled in, I was going on field trips to London, and it hit me in a completely different way. By then, I was enjoying it.
I hope you can at least get proper tea over there (if you drink tea). This is one of the things I struggle with most now that I live abroad again.
no subject
on 2010-09-03 09:33 am (UTC)I also do not understand how it is even possible to pronounce your name wrong. (Unless, I guess, you mean your last name, which I think is simple to pronounce but I don't believe I've ever had occasion to say or hear it out loud.)
Your upstairs neighbours sound awesome. *g*
no subject
on 2010-09-03 10:34 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-09-03 11:03 am (UTC)Sorry about the weather. This has been a crazy summer. The consensus seems to be that this late heat wave may portend a lot of lake-effect snow. Be forewarned.
But I hope the fall foliage display will make up for that!
I will also chime in about the deer tick thing. Be cautious.
Have you been to the Moosewood yet? You must go at least once. Also check out some of the lakeside parks if you can. Oh, and if you see any adverts for a show with the German Juggle Boy, try to go!
no subject
on 2010-09-03 01:06 pm (UTC)I think it was the move when I was 9 . . . it was the worst culture shock, to this day (it was to Virginia, which is basically a foreign country to most Americans). Anyway, now every move is about creating a life particular to that place. Like I can compartmentalize my life story. 'This is my St. Paul life, this is my Belfast life, this is my . . .' Of course, now that I try to describe it, it makes me wonder whether it's all that healthy, but there you have it. Apparently I just fill in my outlines differently each time.
The only thing I can say about thinking you're from South Africa is that most Americans (while we're painting with a broad brush) can't tell non-American accents apart, just as you're having trouble with American regional differences. Personally, I'm not sure how a person can't tell English from Scottish from Australian, but I've seen it happen.
Good to hear that things are progressing as expected and I'm sure you'll have pages and pages of things to show off.