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What I have learned so far about England – By @luce_ReFr

By Luce Renauld Frigiotti

 

What I have learned so far about England

 

To my grand surprise I have found that england is similar in lots of ways to the United States of America. You fry a lot of food and eat a lot of transformed/junk food. Gladly I find enough time to cook my veggies at home, especially during the winter when all we want is to be cosy at home. I even found mac and cheese balls, like meatballs but with mac and cheese inside. It is delicious and you can find it in Marc&Spencer. You have amazing food store, or maybe I just like going to grossery store of different countries. 

UK is similar to USA in mentalities too I find. People are very, very cheerful all the time. Calling each other hunny, darling, and being extra polite. I have found the same constant enthusiasm in the US, especially in the south were I know some people based in Atlanta. For instant when I went to church I met a lot of people who were always so exited. It might seem weird to you because you are naturally like this but in France, I don’t know, people are just less enthusiast, more chill. 

Concerning politics, as I did some research for the Unseat Boris brief I learned about Ali Milani who runs for Labour and most particularly for Labour muslim. As a french I find that almost choking. In France people would never talk about their religions believes. We think it has nothing to do with politics and religion is completely private. That you are christian, muslim, jew, boudhist are anything you will not bring your believes into the public scene of politics. 

Also what I have find being true is that you can go to all kind of country but people’s concerns will mostly be the same : employment issues, insecurity… Indeed people live mostly the same life, that it is in Barcelona, Tokyo, Milano, Philadelphia or Paris. They wake up every morning, go to work, go home to spend some time with their family and rest for a few hours. And again the same day again and again. 

In UK you don’t have holidays like we do in France or in Austria (as I could understand from Elisa). You work everyday. From the Remembrance Day to Sunday that use to be the sacred resting day of the week. On the 11th November in France we do not work. Which could seem like we just enjoy it because we are lazy and maybe, but it still makes it more important. I can’t help to think about Brexit after that because the European Union was created so that wars like this would never exist again. So commemoration, Brexit, all that stuff is not good. All in the sake of profit. Working more to earn more. It’s actually a famous quote from one of our former president « travailler plus pour gagner plus ». In France shops have started to open on Sunday pretty recently, about 4 years ago. And it was a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people and labour communities. The main opponent said that even if it was supposed to be on the principle of volunteering it would not last and soon it would be mandatory. They were probably right. Nevertheless in France working on Sunday is paid double. And that is pretty cool, it creates a lot of opportunity for students who want to work on week ends. 

I feel like UK is also very competitive, in a good way. It has it’s perks but at least at SCA I feel that it is something that we use to motivate ourselves. 

Anyway, England is definitely very different from France, and I am just comparing Paris to London in reality so it’s probably even less accentuated. The more I travel the more I realize that getting along with very people different from you is completely possible. 

Living abroad is such a cool experience so yes I would advise anyone to do it at least once in your life. 

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