New Zebra Crossing Ahead

After a long, long, long plane ride to Detroit and three intense hours of anticipation, many seat swaps (four, in fact), six glasses of orange juice (yes I counted), two trips to the bathroom, forty-five minutes of restless sleep, one giant African man elbowing me in the side, and two movies, this morning my feet touched British soil. (Finally!)
After arriving at London’s Gatwick Airport, Sarah and I (estatic of course) ventured to the underground and decided to check in at the hostel where we are staying to drop our packs off. We took the rail, talking along the way with a lovely lady outfitted in a stylish long red coat and her seven-year-old son Nick, who kept seasoning the conversation with comments like “Mommy, what is a scowl?” and “Mommy, why does that guy standing by the door look like the man from Pirates from the Carribean?” and (my personal favorite) “Mum, in this book, Henry sells his little brother for two pounds. Can I do that to you?”…. Well, we finally made it to the hostel and dropped off our packs. Now let me tell you, I never for a minute expected these next six weeks to be easy, but dang! After a full day of walking (we only rode the train to Victoria Station and hiked the remainder of the way), I can definitely tell you that in January, I will return to Erskine in extremely good shape.

The remainder of the day was spent exploring the Victoria and Albert (affectionately known as the V&A) which thanks to British tax load, was quite free for our viewing pleasure. Now let me tell you two things I love about British society: first, Britain probably has the most amazingly funny street signs, you’ll see on February 13 at Bowie Arts Center. The second is the prolific amount of cowboy boots I saw on the street today. Young girls, older ladies, Indians, Brits, fat chicks, and girls who might as well have been supermodels, they all got the memo. There is nothing more British than a cowgirl. (Insert sarcasm here)

Today it became more evident than ever how stylistically different Sarah and I are. It’s awesome because we compliment each other perfectly, artistically anyways. She finds joy in stopping to take pictures of beautiful street scenes, old ladies, in glass in the V&A, in all things German. On the other hand, I almost wet myself when I saw an entire hall filled with rod iron, one of my favorite things of ALL time, flyers on a street corner, the textile/fashion section in the V&A, little details of the streetscape like crumpled flyers on the ground. She takes pictures, I make notes/sketches on random pieces of paper. It’s great that we find inspiration in different things, hopefully we can learn from each other these few weeks. I could go on and on about the V&A, we spent about five hours exploring that building, and we only left because of closing time. I would ramble about Indian art, modern aesthetic philosophy, the modern movement of form before function and integration of technology into the arts, but I don’t want to put you to sleep and Smilla wants the laptop.

So here’s to Cadbury Flake Bars, to Coronation Street and all other horrid BBC sitcoms, here’s to the British rail system and its punctuality, tea time, miniature cars, the Queen’s English, fish and chips, Indian food on every corner, the largest collection of Egyptian art, bobbies, and queue lines. Here’s to the motherland… Sarah and Sarah have arrived, thank God!

- sarah.hope