The British Image
My experiences and lessons that I gained from living and traveling through London, this past month, are hard to put into words. I learned how to navigate to places through the tube system, how to budget for groceries, and how to rely on myself.
After taking a day trip to Copenhagen, I think I grew as a person for so many reasons. Although the trip is not Great Britain and may fall out of the topic at hand, part of living in Great Britain and Europe in general, is having the access to travel around to different places and cultures. Something I learned right away was that English signs ended the minute we left the airport. In what could have been a scary situation, I decided to laugh the nerves off and calmly think about how I was going to navigate and what I would do. In the culture that we all cherish at home, we expect there to be English everywhere, so it was a huge wake up call when I realized that I was on my own. I feel that a big part of being British is to know how to adapt and respond to different situations. I feel that “living like a Londoner”, a phrase I have used several times throughout the trip, has taught me how to take care of myself in foreign environments. Even in London alone, getting off the tube a stop late might result in a totally different world.
As I discussed in my previous post and will briefly discuss again, something that I had discovered was the rich diversity that Great Britain, and London especially, holds. Over the past several weeks, I have heard so many languages: Spanish, French, Hebrew, Arabic, Italian, and Chinese to just name a few. I have seen people with several different backgrounds. The huge amount of diversity, that I had not expected to see, helped me to understand that being British does not mean one language or accent or skin color—it is a variation.
A big topic that I had mentioned multiple times was style. And while I jokingly said that I expected to see a lot of Nancy Drew-looking women with plaid skirts and knee-length socks, what I noticed instead was not just what people wore, but what it represented: image. I have gathered that being British means that one takes pride in their image. Not just physically with clothes, but also places that people live. As far as clothes, I have noticed all along that whether people are going to work or just strolling down the streets casually on the weekend, the style in London is very important. I will not go into detail again, because I feel that I have exhausted my topic of clothes, but instead I will further explain why image is so important in homes and cities to the typical Brit.
When I went to the East End of London for the Jack-the-Ripper Tour and again with the class for the primary school tour and walk around Brick Lane, it was interesting to hear how the East End has been labeled. In books and movies, it has always been labeled as the “rough part of town”, where poverty and prostitution was at an all-time high. While there, the tour guides made several efforts on both the Jack-the-Ripper Tour as well as the Arcadia tour to explain that times have changed and the area is bouncing back from the poverish times. The East End, specifically Whitechapel and Brick Lane have been tainted with a bad reputation and there was a lot of effort done to reinstate these beautiful areas. Our Arcadia guides made several points to explain that the Jack-the-Ripper stories have darkened the area and shed light from important women and workers of that area and time period. It really fascinated me with the lengths that they went through to show that it was actually a very nice area with rich culture and history. On the opposite spectrum, when we visited Oxford, there was a ton of time spent on the emphasis of how competitive and impressive it is to say that one goes to Oxford. The guide was sure to explain every single important person that went there to show off the school's identity that Oxford always brings out great people. It ties in to the idea of image because Oxford really wanted to put out the best representation possible in order to impress others and maintain its status.
All in all, this was an amazing trip from which I have learned so much. I learned that what it means to be British is different for everyone, because it depends on the background from which one grows up as well as where and how they are raised. In my month in London, I feel that being British means that one takes pride in how they look, where they live, and the rich diversity that comes with living here.
