Hey I'm back

I've been back in the US for almost a day now! W00t!

I had a decent trip -- I got home via a Virgin train to London, a long London Underground tube ride, and finally a Virgin Atlantic flight. I already made a bad joke to Gus about how I got home and it wasn't received well so I won't say it here.

Virgin Atlantic was excellent. It was my first time flying with them and I enjoyed all my dealings with them except for checking in my baggage -- they were a bit slow. Nice things about the flight:

• some of the bathrooms on the plane are as big as the ones on trains
• too many movies I wanted to watch and not a long enough flight (this sounds pathetic, I know)

As always, for posterity -- food consumed on flight:

• multiple cups of orange juice and regular water
  
• Virgin Atlantic cola (they have their own brand...)
• pasta salad
• "Puerto Rican Beef Stew"
• bread + butter
• tea with milk and sugar
• a Gü "pud"
  
• Harrogate Spa Water
• ice cream, in Virgin Atlantic labeling
  
• a Gü brownie

My flight landed at EWR on time. Surprisingly it didn't take long to go through Customs and claim my baggage. When I left the airport, I was hit with humidity. Ahhh America, but mostly.. ahhh New Jersey!

So yea, it feels nice to be home, sleeping in my bed and living in a nice house. I definitely miss the UK in some ways, but I like being in a land of single water taps too much. Overall, not to be bombarding with post-study abroad platitudes about how wonderful it is to experience a foreign culture (they're all true, btw), I had a good time. There were some things I liked more about the UK than I did the US, specifically how "relaxed" the people are compared to Americans -- they definitely know how to have a good time. Also, the UK is much more historically rich not only in terms of history-history but also traditions and customs. It's definitely something to be proud of, if I were British.

However I wasn't in love with the UK. Certainly it is my favorite European country out of all the ones I visited this semester, but it isn't perfect. Most of my grievances with the UK are mostly things that I grew accustomed to in the US. The US is a much more conservative environment, politically and even in everyday life. The UK, as I blogged about before, is quite liberal -- universal health care, heavily subsidized university tuitions, hefty unemployment benefits, just to name a few examples. Additionally, I got the feeling that the UK was slightly more open to things that would be deemed "improper" or send some Americans into cardiac arrest. I can't really put my finger on it or draw on compelling examples, other than a certain mechanical ride in a club I went to, naughtier-themed parties, bars on campus premises, 18 instead of 21 to drink, and a television show called Skins. Granted, some of these things do exist in America, but only in certain pockets of America and definitely not as prevalent and out in the open. It was strange at first, but I grew accustomed to it over the course of the semester (and after spending 3 weeks in a much more liberal mainland Europe, I no longer found the UK to be that liberal).

The CCTV cameras in the UK. Yea, they were weird to be around at first. Still weird now that I think about it. Though a couple weeks ago, campus police sent out an email about a sexual assault that occurred on one of the residential campuses. It described the physique of the attackers, which is what the CMU emails do too. However, it also described the people who were walking in the area a short time either before or after the incident and requested that they identify themselves as witnesses and provide information to help the police. Hmm.. interesting. I wonder how effective the CCTV cameras are -- in this case it comes down to how effective it was at eliciting the witnesses' help. Something to ponder. But I still think it is creepy that CCTV cameras are everywhere.

Anyway, CCTV cameras aside (I had been meaning to write a little something about it but I had no time and nowhere to put it but now and here), study abroad was fun! Relaxing, as anyone could've guessed. But I'm definitely looking forward to returning to CMU. I met some nice and friendly students at the University of Manchester and socially it's a more exciting university. However, I do miss the smaller size of CMU and right now I'm more interested in finishing my degree/being more marketable. Bottom line, I'm glad I spent the semester abroad. It gave me a lot of time and opportunities to experience new things and do a bit of self-reflection. I hope this blog wasn't a terrible read and thanks for reading!