Upon touching ground at London Heathrow Airport after a sleepless flight and groggily stumbling over to baggage claim in a very attractive airsick-American-in-sweatpants-and-a-hoodie sort of way, I began my three-month adventure as a pseudo-ambassador revitalizing the United States' reputation abroad by throwing up my entire airline breakfast (au revoir, croissant) in the back of a black cab while listening to a British gentleman's somber drone list the country's deaths by teenage violence this year in sobering detail:
"Jan. 3, John Doe 1 stabbed in Essex; Jan. 15, John Doe 2 beaten with a bat in Manchester; Jan. 18, John Doe 3 peeled and made into sausage...."
(Clearly sad, but because the radio newsman was English, also strangely soothing.)
Arriving at my dormitory, I unlocked the door to my cardboard box of a room, plopped down on what I thought was a mattress but felt more like metal slinkies at a Halloween party (draped in cloth and perhaps pretending to be a collective ghost?), and discovered, with much the same feeling I imagine I would have if my left arm spontaneously fell off, that my laptop's motherboard had decided to jump ship some time during my flight (clearly ignoring the appropriate form of travel in its personification and only adding insult to injury).
Then I had to go grocery shopping-and that was the most depressing part of my first day.
Ogling the food in the supermarket, everything seems decently priced if you just read the numbers, but once you factor in currency, multiply everything by two and cry, there is really nothing left but to shuffle off to the pasta aisle and decide how best to ration spaghetti strands that week.
My more worldly peers have told me foreign currency is like Monopoly money (also worth more than the U.S. dollar) and thus very easy to spend. Experiencing how painful it is to hand over each British pound, I don't quite buy that, which is good because I just don't have the money.
It is trying times like these that make people stressed and cantankerous. And it is when people are stressed and cantankerous that the Germans start wars.
Let me explain.
I casually mentioned to flatmates M and S, of Germany, that I had witnessed one of the newly moved-in residents of the next-door suite, filled with U.K.-native freshmen (who, sorry kids, aren't cool here either), scuttle through the broken fire door between our flats and snatch our toilet paper.
"But ve bought dat and it vas quite expensive!" M said, before the two began an energetic discussion in German.
Their reaction to the theft was unexpected, because a) it was just a bit of TP and b) flatmate A, of Denmark, had told me the night before that Germans were very agreeable, kind and humble people after the whole, you know, World War II thing. The rest of Europe holds the Nazi card, and Germany has to fold.
"A German can't win an argument," A said. "It's true. Ask any German if he's proud of his country."
I said that was the saddest thing I had ever heard.
"Holocaust."
And in that case-in-point scenario, I conceded.
I was worried M and S were planning some sort of retaliatory invasion plotting our awkward alliance of Germans, Americans and Danes against the Brits and suggested a friendly note posted on the other side of the fire door. In retrospect, the one English word I did recognize from their conversation was "cucumber," so it is very likely they were talking about something else (or were otherwise, very sick, sick people) and my interruption was unnecessarily, ahem, preemptive.
M dictated the note: "Ve know you stole our toilet paper. It vas expensive. Buy your own ent give us back."
I wrote: "Howdy, neighbors! Did you borrow some TP? A bit pricey. Would you mind throwing some rolls our way when you can? xoxo!"
I fancied myself a diplomat. Our neighbors fancied me a tool.
I received a sarcastic note in return and an added bonus of angry glares in the hallway. It seems like an awful lot of hurt feelings over what amounts to £2, but when the exchange rate is out to get you and your little dog too, every penny counts. On the bright side, if the dollar bill continues to plummet in value, even if our TP isn't returned, I'll have something else my flat can use.
Lysa Chen is a Trinity junior. Her column runs every other Friday.
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