So I guess this is it. My time abroad is pretty much over. For the past two weeks, I’ve been sitting in my room, writing my papers, and trying not to reflect on a trip, a semester, a “stage of my life” that hasn’t actually ended yet. Going abroad really has been puzzling for me. And to reinforce the cliché, it’s not just where I am, but the people I’ve surrounded myself with and the lifestyle that I have crafted…
Oh how the days go by. London feels like home now, and the urge to absorb the city as much as possible on a daily basis is slowly starting to fade. I wake up, go to class, go grocery shopping, do work, hang out at night, etc. Things are starting to blend together here. It’s hard to believe it’s already November. Things like the tube are second nature at this point, the only problem being that I eventually run out…
Londoners love late-night fried chicken. Seriously. No matter what hour of the day, if you wander for at least three blocks, you’ll find one, if not five, late-night chicken (or kebab) places. They sneak up on you— just like the rain. But the rain is one thing I should not be surprised about. Chicken and rain aside, I have slowly been learning London as I try my best to not get lost. I finally made my way up to Camden with…
As the beginning of September approached, I slowly began saying goodbye to friends from home, ended my summer job, visited some friends at Vassar and…waited at home on my couch. Unlike all my friends going to school at Vassar or abroad, I had to wait until September 20 to fly out to London. Alas, on the morning of September 21, I along with twelve of my classmates stumbled out of a rather cozy charter bus onto the streets of New…
So, this will be my last post, huh? Doesn’t particularly feel like “just yesterday” I was writing my first one–no, it was definitely an internship cover letter yesterday–but that’s what thoughtful people say in times like these. I certainly feel as though my time abroad has been too short; that’s certainly more to the point, eh? Yet I’m not really at the end of it: I still have a month and a bit from the time I’m writing this. What…
So, academics. That’s what I’m here for, right? Obviously—with no hint of sarcasm. (No hint.) I really didn’t think studying abroad would be that different from Vassar. To be honest, I thought it’d be exactly the same, just with easier assignments. Not really sure why I thought that, really, seeing as people here don’t even know which side of the road to drive on. (Sidenote: a friendly elderly man on the bus informed me that this was because of jousting,…
My rather preachy last post spent an unnecessary amount of words directed toward those back at Vassar who may be frightened, or at the very least daunted, by the concept of going JYA. With all that high and mighty posturing, what have you got to show for your efforts, Jalilah? O teach us, enlightened one–tell us of your rad adventures. Well, hypothetical and overly-sarcastic reader, the outset of my journey was anything but rad. Burdened with unexaggeratedly the WORST sore…
I ought to preface my first post with a little about myself, and how I first approached the idea of JYA. From the get-go, I was fairly sure I was going to be a proud member of the JYStay crew. While my friends know that in the right situations I can be a bit of a motor-mouth, sharing a bit too much and talking a bit too fast, if I’m not with a group of close friends, I tend to…
Being in a foreign country can mean missing certain things about home; these things can be small and simple (good peanut butter) or large and complicated (the Great American Dream). One thing that I definitely knew that I would miss was the best American holiday, in my humble opinion: Thanksgiving. I have so many pleasant memories of spending a Thursday in November with my family—sharing turkey, vegetables, muffins, and all sorts of other food (although, to be honest, I mostly eat the…
Occasionally, I’ll see two artistic works that work really well in conversation with each other, and this stunning confluence has recently occurred. A few weeks ago, I travelled to Ghent to attend Vooruit’s Possible Futures Festival, where I saw Ant Hampton and Tim Etchells’s piece “Lest We See Where We Are.” I also recently saw a piece at the Battersea Arts Centre in London called “The Good Neighbour Audio Tour.” The similarities between the two projects are striking: both involve carrying a large object…