Coming to London was like taking a fish out of a bowl and putting it in a lake. In this metaphor, I’m the fish (maybe a beta fish, they’re pretty) and my original bowl was the state of Washington. I knew this water so well -- I had friends I had grown up with since my childhood, I knew where everything is, I knew the names of many people and when I’d have conversations, I could picture easily what people were talking about. If someone mentioned to me that they went to Fred Meyer yesterday, I could picture that because I’ve been there myself dozens of times.
Now imagine the fish (me) being taken from its comfortable water to something much bigger: the city of London. In this water, the temperature and feeling are entirely different -- I don’t know where anything is, I don’t know anyone and I can’t really “take a step back” either because I still have to swim.
In the first couple of months, one of the trickiest things was learning how to listen to the names and accents of my new friends. In Washington state, I was fairly used to common American names, but London is incredibly diverse and home to people from all over the world.
