Features of British Culture

Over the course of these three weeks, not only did I observe English landscape, architecture, art, and literature, but I had the opportunity to closely examine and learn about British culture as well, and several strong features of this culture have influenced the way I respond to the country and people around me.

Privacy - There is some truth to the reputation that Americans have for being loud, and the reverse could be said as well - the English are rather quiet, especially in public places. Conversations are confined to the people they pertain to, stalls in toilets reach almost to the floor with no gap between the walls, and as Lisa mentioned, contact on public transportation is restrained, and when it must occur, it is quickly glossed over and then vanishes into the dim haze of courtesy.

Space - England is much smaller than America, and also much older. Many buildings are older than fire codes or specifications for the disabled. Hallways and rooms are often in odd shapes to allow for the maximum usage of what space there is. For example, to get to the Backpacker's in Oxford, we had to first climb up the steep stairs to the third story (American). No lifts were available at all. In London, our hotel made excellent use of floor-to-ceiling mirrors in the entryway to give the illusion of a much larger space. I think that it's because of having less space that English people are more tolerant of squeezing together on the tube and in buses. This space issue also translates into how the English value distance - many of them don't drive because they simply don't need to. Whatever city you might find yourself in, you're in walking distance of most necessary shops.

Flowers - I haven't really drawn any conclusions about the flowers that I've seen, but I took a lot of pictures.

Lisa Zamecnik

The tube or underground is a very interesting way to travel around London. The landscape is very different from the streets above it. To get to and from the trains you have to pass through areas where you can either buy a ticket or swipe your card to get through to where the trains are located. At some stations you have to walk down stairways or use an escalator or lift if available. If you are lucky enough to use an escalator you have to stand to the right so other people can get by. At other stations you may have to walk through a series of tunnels that occasionally have someone playing an instrument and/or singing hoping some of the people passing by will put money in their case.
If you are changing from one train line to another you have to consult your tube map to see where the stations are located to be able to do this. Sometimes you have to walk quite a distance underground and change levels to get to another train line. This can be tricky at first, but once you get used to how the trains run and if you can read map it is not so bad.

The landscape underground is a series of tunnels to get here and there. Everything, of course, has to be lit. The lighting is very good, but you are reminded of where you are when you peer into a grate in the wall into utter blackness. As you pass these grates you can sometimes feel cool air coming from them. The temperature does fluctuate quite a bit from cold to hot as you are walking to the train. The temperature on the train also can fluctuate from comfortable to unbearably hot especially during rush hour when the trains are full.
Potential passengers always seem to be in a such hurry to reach the trains no matter what time of day it happens to be. During rush hour this is even worse and the passengers are packed into the train cars as tightly as humanly possible. Those that are not lucky enough to get a seat have to stand and hang onto hand rails. The passengers on the trains do not interact with other passengers unless they have to ask them to move so that they can get out. Passengers do not look at each other as they are either reading newspapers, books, playing games on their phones, or listening to music.

Some of the things you hear while on the train are the rustling of newspapers as readers turn the pages and sometimes you will hear passengers talking, but that is usually because they know each other and came on together. You can hear the clacking of the tracks as they pass underneath and the squeal and screech of the wheels as the train is switching tracks. This is so loud that some passengers actually cover their ears with their hands!

Soya Hirano -- Holland Park, Thursday May 6th

Despite being an English major, I love inspirational pictures more than words. I may not fully or rhetorically reason why I post these pictures, but bear with my writing and pictures, please. (Alas, uploading more than two pictures on this blog is technically time-consuming and difficult to organize.)

I missed to go to York, which was an optional bus trip, but visited by chance Holland Park - originally owned by Lord Holland - in the late afternoon after a relaxing morning without time pressure. The park was about a 5-minute walk north-northwesternward from London Lodge Hotel in Kensington, at which our study abroad group stayed. Founded in the 1870s (I think), the buildings of Holland House, a couple of which are shown in the pictures above (you will see the same fountain from two different angles), took only a little space in the park. Rather, the park consists mainly of different gardens and lawns for sport or amusement. I had good hours of watching trees (lol) and birds like peacocks. The peacock on the left did not allow me to near him closer than 3 or 4 feet; yet, I made it! Here's the picture of me and him. A bunch of male and female peacocks were wandering around without confinement, avoiding humans. The males looked beautiful, but their ugly and sort of glottal cry surprised me.

I was tricked: The man on the right is not real. It's a statue, Walking Man (1998) by Sean Henry. I thought that the statue's location surrounded by the trees is unique.

Here I attach some pictures of a Japanese garden, Kyoto Garden, founded by the Kyoto Chamber of Commerce and Industry and The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea on 17 September 1991. I found this garden in the middle of the park. I hope you have noticed the picture of a reflection of the tree below in the Kyoto Garden is upside-down. :} The stone garden lantern and a small column stone with a square concave on the top for water are typical items of Japanese gardens (see the picture on the left). The picture may have more Japanese signifiers, but I don't know very well about Japanese gardening, even though I'm Japanese.

The statue below is Boy with Bear Cubs by John Macllen Swan (I don't know what year he carved it). I took four pictures of the statue because I'm crazy about perspectives. To my limited knowledge about statuary and kinesics, Swan's expression of the boy and bear cubs' motions is animated and impressive. You could also see a cub's hard palate and tongs separately.

This is merely my personal trip apart from the study abroad program, but the dusk sky was my favorite scene. The picture was taken from the passage alongside the Sports Field of Holland Park. I had to darken my camera's picture's brightness to vivify the sky's color more than the leaves in the frontdrop of the picture.

My interpretation of the scene may or may not be relevant to our class discussion about Addison's essay on our vision, imagination, and understanding. I was imagining a central point amidst the leaves and clouds. The sky and clouds are pictorial like a fanciful painting maybe because I dropped my camera's exposure so much, or/and because the shapes of the clouds were too fuzzy to be vivid. Clouds are not altogether under the same sunlight, since some of them are gray in the shadow, and some aren't.

Changing exposure at dusk could show you two points of views, as you see below the two comparison pictures of the same tennis court in the park. In a way, our eyes are able to see both terrestial and celestial views; however, my camera apparently can't but see the scene with certain brightness, offering different impressions of it.

At the end of my stroll, I took two pictures of a cherry tree. The fallen patals of the tree over the ground were restful and peaceful as well as melancholic. Some of them were still beautiful.

Catherine Bigelow

It has been a whirlwind these past few days - so many sights in such little time! Stourhead on the 27th was beautiful, but today we visited Prior Park, which is (according to the brochure) a fine example of the English 18th century landscape movement. The most beautiful aspect to me was how hidden everything was, and how around every turn there was a different view. As we would walk along the path, we were surrounded by trees and bushes, but every now and again they would part and give a gorgeous view of the grounds. It's hard to believe that it was all man-made, and even harder to imagine what may have been on the land before.


(Image 1 - the Palladian Bridge in Prior Park from a high up view)
(Image 2 - me, in front of the Cascade at Prior Park)

Jeremy Schaefer

There have been so many amazing landscapes that look like they are straight from a painting with, they probably have been actually painted a few times. One thing that I found interesting is the fences that separate the pasture fields. In America all the fences are wire fences and not visually pleasing, but in England most of the fences are actually just hedges that have grown over a fence. These fences look a lot more neat and pleasing than just fence posts and wire fencing. Going into a coal mine was also very interesting because I really like construction and I found going into a coal mine really fun. It was amazing to see everything that people had to do in order to make the type of life we have today and the incredible conditions that they worked in. And of course it gave me a chance to get this killer picture of Maria in a hard hat and light. She looks so happy in this picture.