Camila Zelaya

        During my time in the United Kingdom I have been able to encounter some of the people who live here and has helped widen my perceptions of them. A noteworthy aspect of England in general is the diversity seen throughout. Especially in London we can see all kinds of people from different backgrounds as well as hear several different languages spoken on a daily basis. When walking around the Whitechapel area there seemed to be a particularly large population of people of Indian descent and the area has been modified for their needs since they mainly preside there. Because of this I feel like the groups of different people tend to stick together because that sense of community has been created and they feel comfortable in that atmosphere, but it might not be the same in other areas. As for adapting to English customs, my perspective is that there’s no opposition or at least noticeable opposition to acquiring English customs, but they continue to use their same customs that their community shares. Although there are some areas where people of different ethnic populations tend to migrate towards you can still see a great deal of different people all around London. This was somewhat surprising to me because I knew about the migration of some groups of people due to the history of England and its so called colonies but in media it paints a very different picture. A lot of British TV shows or movies focus mainly on the traditional white English person and in very rare cases actually include a person of color as a main character  or even side character. You don’t even have to watch the movie per say to get this idea of England, in most cases the movie posters such as Hot Fuzz, Bridget Jones’s Baby, and many other movies you can simply google, represent only the white characters, very rarely will you see a person of color on the poster. Because of this it’s reasonable to think why I had the assumption that when looking around England it would not be very diverse.

        Another really noticeable difference between the English and Americans is how you portray yourself in public. Americans are known to be quite loud in comparison to other people from different parts of the world and it didn’t really become apparent until we went out in London. Most Londoners are very quiet or reserved even in groups of people. I remember one time specifically of when some of us went out to our first pub, I was seated at a table for four and the other people on this specific trip took up about two or three other tables. In the table behind us there was a group of three people who weren’t even remotely as loud as our group, the almost seemed to be whispering while they talked. It was then that I first became conscience of how loud we actually were and realized that this is the reason why people think Americans are really obnoxious and loud and not to mention the topics we tend to talk about with our friends. Americans are much more open about their personal lives while the English seem more reserved and don’t really delve into the topics that us Americans talk about at least not in public.

        The last thing that I really admire about the England and Europe in general is the history behind these country and being able to see and experience personally how people have grown from those older time periods. Although not all of the history is pretty and in fact can be quite gruesome, its important to know and learn from the past to prevent similar events from occurring in the future. An example of this could be the conflict that can about due to the different views on religion and how in many cases in the past these disputes resulted in murders and a lot or drama in general, but today you wouldn’t really see that in England. From these older and more grotesque time periods we get the famous architecture that has survived hundreds of years. The combination of having both really old buildings down in central London right next to really new and modern buildings is surreal and little funny to look at. Not only is the gothic architecture really beautiful and interesting to look at but to also being able to walk through these buildings and think about the history that took place in these buildings hundreds of years ago is almost overwhelming to think about. Each era has its own unique style of architecture which could be referred to as the monarch at the time’s architecture (ex. Victorian) or just the era in general (ex. Medieval) and all reflect the social and political climate in one way or another. Although the new and older buildings side by side looks funny it seems to blend or at least no one in England really seems to care about the difference in architecture.