London Bridges

I felt out of it all day until I sat by the river Thames at sundown with a cup of Earl Grey.

My flight was uneventful, which is exactly how you want flights to be. The absolute last thing that you want on a flight is an event. It was quite nice actually. They gave out fuzzy socks and I drank a couple beers and watched Game of Thrones. Except for occurring at thirty thousand feet, it could have been any other Friday night for me.

My housing is steps away from the National Theatre and the London Eye, near Waterloo station. The suite is very Ikea-esque, it even smells like Ikea (like wood glue, not like meatballs). I’ve only met one other fellow intern: Billy from Philly (you can’t make these things up).

Forcing myself to not sleep all day after the red-eye flight, I walked down to St. Paul’s Cathedral on one side of the river and then back up the other side to Waterloo Bridge. I would like to cross them all eventually, although there is at least one that is closed for construction.

Bridge Crossings count: 2 (Millennium Bridge, Waterloo Bridge.)

In places where I can blend in physically, my travel MO is to keep quiet. Without words, I can pretend to be native but as soon as I open my mouth, the jig is up. Sometimes it is up even if I don’t talk though. At a grocery store today, the cashier said, “Are you from the States? You all have the same credit cards.”

After less than one day of being here, I have already overheard two separate conversations regarding how “British” someone is or isn’t. This interests me because only GOP primary candidates and Sarah Palin discuss the relative degrees of one’s Americanism (and it usually hinges on how white and rural and conservative the people in question are). So naturally, I was curious about the possible factors of the British Quotient (BQ), but the discussions were light on substance. The UK border control stooge, who scrutinized my visa, told her colleague that she was “more British than the Queen, ” but didn’t offer any proof. A couple near me at lunch was adamant that one of the pair was just being British when he didn’t want to accompany her to some event.

I am quite literally dead on my feet. Luckily I haven’t a thing to do until 5pm on Sunday.