Here I am! It has been a long time since my last post, and actually it has also been a long time since I landed here in the Uk.
Let's say I FREAKIN' love it!
It's cold, it's windy, it's rainy, I can see the sun once every week, people talk in a hundred impossible ways but hey! It's England!
I basically landed in Leeds without knowing where I was going to sleep. I didn't really have time to organize anything - I came back from Rome just two days before my departure, tired as HELL after having taken care of a bunch of screaming foreign kids (four hundred and twelve to be precise :P) and with no time for packing. The result? I came here and I scared to death one of those nice guys of the Meet and Greet Service (Where are you going? I have no idea. Where will you sleep? Is the railway station comfortable? LOL.) My luggage was sooo light, and I was proud of it, but now I understand that the weight was like that due to the massive amount of useful things I forgot at home. My room is HEEELLA small, and until three hours ago it was in a indecent state of chaos. Three hours ago I also found (FINALLY) the laundry room, so now my bedroom looks really like a battlefield. And I AM tired, as you can read.
BUT HEY, THIS IS ENGLAND!
Course, it's not perfect. My first impression though was absolutely WOW. As B. and L. witnessed, I fell in love with british boys. Hell yeah, where have you guys been all these years? They are everywhere, surrounding me, I cannot go anywhere without feeling in heaven. I'll turn into a hooker soon, AH.
Is pretty funny though how I divide systematically all the people (boys) I meet. I am supposed to be here to wipe out prejudices and pre-conceived ideas, and yet I divide them in three shameful categories…
1) Cook's. These guys remind me SOOO much of Cook. And since this is a public blog I won't say what I'd do to them.
2) Matthew's. Cuties. They are just like my favorite singer, how could I not love 'em?
3) Nobody's. Ah. Go on, I won't see ya.
I understand is stupid share all the people in these three ways. I understand people may not like to be compared to the most awesome and yet the biggest asshole character that Skins has ever had, or that someone may not be happy of being a mirror of - no, okay, there's no person that cannot be happy of being compared to Matthew Bellamy. But damn, why everybody here look just like them? It's an english conspiracy to kill me softly.
So, I am fully enjoying British culture and its natural beauty. Meeting me you'd see the eyes of a little girl with a new, huge and delicious lollipop. No innuendos in this sentence!
But.
Somewhere in my deepest inner mind, I started to perceive and take in differences I have never expected. Is not as far as Asia, though it feels like another world: I left Italy with the feeling that these months were going to be easy, after my experience in China. That I knew already how to behave, I knew the language, I knew the right manners. I was so self-confident that I came to the point of convincing myself that I couldn't be scared by something so close, so similar, so reliable. I fell into the trap that led all those renaissance explorer to go farther and further, assuming that the farther the more different and the closer the more similar, without preparing myself to reality.
Instead, I found out England is unlike indeed.
The surface is really similar, but deeper inside you can feel some differences. Is the awkward feeling that starts from your stomach, and then spreads into your whole body; and then you're done, you cannot talk anymore. You watch, you listen, you understand, you smile like an idiot but you absolutely shut your mouth up. You are somehow scared to broke this precious and fragile balance established among all the people around you. In these moments you clearly perceive yourself as an outsider.
Talks are just too different. Greetings are different, and the way you stay with others are different. You slow down the conversation, you feel your presence superflous. The first example I could think of is: Goodbyes. The average Italian would say bye kissing someone on the chick once, twice or even three times. Otherwise it feels like you where just waiting to leave, that you didn't enjoy the company, even though you actually had a lot of fun. But here, you just don't.
It's a violent collision between two worlds and I am exactly in the middle. I know I shouldn't be here, I know this ain't the right place, I WANT to stay here though. I wanna watch the destruction of these two worlds, waiting quietly that the storm passes through to show the beautiful newborn. It's a bit melodramatic, okay, but that's exactly how I feel right now. I am shared between two worlds, and it's not really a nice feeling. I am ready to jump in the new world, but something is holding tight my feet; the only thing I can do is bouncing in and out from one world to the other whilst I look for a way to set myself free. It's the end, and I'll push myself toward a new beginning. To grow, to become a better person, to travel, to understand. There's no knowledge without sacrifice, and there's no understanding without fatigue. There's no happiness without distress.
Anyway.
Next posts less theoretical and more practical. Just to laugh a little bit bout english habits!
(hope none of my flatmates read it, AH.)
