Life, Travel 
No Comments Social Distance & The Loo
So I was in the bathroom… the Loo… the toilet… today and realized how different they are here. You know how when you’re sitting on the pot, you can see through the cracks a little and people outside can see your feet? I suddenly realized that it’s not like that here. The stalls have only a small inch below the door and there are no “cracks” or peeping holes. It’s so much more “private” here.
On the other hand, I found that extremely ironic since the social distance here is much closer and less private. [I have to say as a disclaimer that London is an extremely internationally diverse place and it's a huge city so those instances when I feel uncomfortable may not neccessarily be attributed to "Britain" as a whole, but nonetheless...] Anywho, these people also get really creative with bathrooms. The stalls, the sinks, the toilet paper holder things, and Dear Lord how they decide to flush the toilet. The levers are always different and they seem to get super inventive with the mechanism to flush. They’re usually big buttons or even a wave motion sensor. Either way, I’m always having to think about how to flush the toilet. I have yet to see a truly automatic toilet here, which is a comfort because I hate those things. No matter how old I am they scare me.
Anyways, back to social distance. I’ll be standing in line at a restaurant, clothing store, or even at a bus stop and people just act like I’m not there. I posted a blog earlier about the simple courtesy of ‘Excuse Me’ [here, in case you're interested: http://amberjean.me/journal/?m=201210&paged=6]
That’s one thing I really miss: ‘Excuse me’. People just keep walking straight instead of that awkward move to the side move people pull in the states to be polite. I guess I just enjoyed it when people were mindful of their surroundings and courteous to other people. I held a door open for a woman with a food cart at Uni today and she was so surprised and said a timid thank you and moved on. Odd.
Don’t even get me started with public transport. I was nearly suffocated the other day because silly me decided to switch trains at Leicester Square in Zone 1 aka busy mobs of people at peak hour. STUPID IDEA. To be continued… I’m going to talk about my adventures with public transport in my next blog.
If you have any questions about any of the stuff I talked about please ask. Until then, cheers mate! 