London Culture

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London Culture
I should have realized or seen this so long ago. I have have been here a bit over two months and I just got the "AHA"Experience. I was working for the Postgraduate Open-house night at City University tonight for the Student Ambassador program. First of all the Student Ambassadors are equilivent to Student Council back in the states. We do odd jobs that need to be done around the school and represent the school in the process. It's pretty cool. At any rate I was a Marshal to make sure people didn't lost and answer any questions they may have had along the way. I was just thankful they didn't throw me in to give campus tours, I would have gotten a group of them lost! At any rate, the end of the night approaches and we were only counting down until 19.00 so we could start cleaning up and leave. James comes around to all of us (one of the program leaders) and asks us if we would like white, red, or orange juice. Most of us sipped on a glass of wine while finishing off our evening. You would never see that in the states. Even if you were of age in a program like that you would be condoned for "drinking publically" while in the uniform. Here, it's so open and accepted. We are all of age, and having a glass of wine at the end of the night isn't seen as inappropriate or bad for the image of the school/program. I felt a bit weird holding the glass of wine and answering a few questions yet at the end. Binge drinking is beginning to happen here by teenagers and i swear it is from the example of American's (well, us and the TV shows they have out; the OC, the hills ... etc.) Since you are allowed to drink at a younger age and social drinking is well accepted it hasn't been as huge of a problem here. This may not be exactly an "AHA" exieience, but all the articles and everything people have told me about how different it will be here with drinking for example didn't hit me until tonight.

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