The Adjustment: Not too Bad!

May 18, 2016

While abroad, we are staying at student accommodation building that houses not only students from Northeastern but from other schools in the US and the UK. This place is extremely modern and is reminiscent of a typical apartment you would find in America. It is a studio-apartment for two with a stove, microwave and fridge with enough space to hold us over for a month. For food, aside from eating out, we go to the local grocery store Marks and Spencer’s, which is the British equivalent to a BJs, and we shop at the local mall which is a convenient five-minute walk away and directly across from the grocery store. Directly near us are many restaurants where we can get food at most times during the day, a few bus stops and the Underground system (subway), phone services store similar to an AT&T or Verizon, and other places that would commonly be seen in the US particularly the city.

Meeting other students has probably been the least difficult thing here in terms of adjusting to this dialogue abroad. We are all interested in the health science based classes being taught, even though we are not all necessary the same major. I’ve met a few people who vary in age, race, cultural background, interest and tastes, and goals for the future. Our TAs and professors try their best to make sure we are doing activities that force us out of our comfort zones and make it easy to talk to others in the group to avoid cliquing and sequestering ourselves. I’ve made sure that even though I do have some friends going into this dialogue, knowing about a quarter of the group beforehand, I strive to talk to people outside my friend group in order to make new friends for the trip and beyond.

It has not been (apart from some of the slang!) exceptionally ditrying to adjust to life abroad. Of all the places in the world, London, in my opinion is the most like Boston when it comes to cities in other nations. It is an extremely old city but they have tried their best to accommodate the ever changing style of modern society, tending to the needs of this generation and the previous one, tourists and locals, the less fortunate and the well off. This city is one that I will definitely be revisiting outside of the dialogue as it has so much to offer, and we only have a limited amount of time to take it all in.

Written By

Cynthia Orofo

Living in America for the entirety of my life has blanketed me in a shell of American culture and lifestyles. I aim to expand my limited view of the world that I live and learn in everyday and in having the possibility to study abroad, an individual is granted the opportunity to broaden his/her global outlook by experiencing every aspect of that nation’s civilization, culture and society. With this dialogue, I wish to be thrown past my limits and experience first hand what it means to live, work, and learn in an environment completely different from my own. One of my long term goals in life is to better the lives of the deprived and disenfranchised, essentially helping those who may not have or have lost the ability to help themselves. This I aspire to attain later in life by constructing a free health clinic in impoverished villages in Nigeria. This dialogue gives a global prospect on health care systems which can broaden my way of thinking in progress towards a better understanding of the differences in health care systems.