Philip Abbott's Scholarship Report

Mr. chairman, members of the Cornell Club of London, and our guests... It's a great honour to be here to celebrate thanksgiving with you all and I'm having a really great time tonight.

I've been asked to share with you some of my experiences at Cornell this summer, and in particular, I'm going to describe some of the differences I found between America and back here at home.

When I asked an American tourist visiting London to sum up England once, he said,

"Warm beer, cups of tea, and fish 'n' chips".

I remember thinking, 'how can he even dare to sum up the country so simply' -especially as he did it using just food and drink - surely there's much more to England than that?

Anyway it was my time to go to America and be the tourist and on the 27th of June I flew into New York on my first ever trip to the U.S. Armed only with information gleamed from Hollywood movies, and stories I had heard from friends who had returned from holidays there. I had several weeks of training in me, playing basketball, eating hamburgers, and drinking cream soda. And now, now I felt I was ready to tackle the States.

But it can't be all that different? Can it?

Let me explain. Before this year I had only once left mainland Britain, and that was for a short trip to the Channel Islands to visit my Aunt. So my trip to America was an exciting prospect but also somewhat unnerving.

Sure I was expecting the yellow cabs, the different accent, green money, basketball, and 312 channels of television. But it became clear very quickly that the differences were far vaster than I had ever expected.

I enjoyed talking to friends in Dickson Hall, answering questions about England and finding out more about America. One such friend was Lev - a local student from Binghamton.

I guess nothing brought home the differences quite as much as when one day we were eating lunch together in a college canteen.

He was talking about the World Series, Snapple, and Hershey's chocolate. Whilst I was eating as much as I could squeeze down, returning back at regular intervals for more. Not because I was particularly hungry, just because you were allowed, so I did!

Anyway Lev has never been to England and, as we often would, we started talking about the differences between our very different countries.

Then Lev stopped and smiled.

"I've got another difference", he said excitedly.

"In America we say 'truck' and you say 'torry'". I smiled before I noticed his 'aren't I clever' pose. He was being serious!

The fact, I guess, is that countries do have a tendency to cut themselves off from each other. Whilst I left people gasping when I told them I had never watched a baseball game or even tasted a bagel. I found it difficult to understand how 18 year olds could be so content with life, without Marmite or Premiership football in there lives.

But you see this is what I find so appealing and exciting about travelling. My professor eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, seeing wild chipmunks, people wondering what on earth I'm saying, ice actually not being a rare luxury, and waitresses who seemed to actually enjoy waiting tables. These are all things I don't find in my life at home.

Anyway, whilst I enjoyed these differences I continued to explore the campus. Cornell is the most beautiful campus I have ever seen as well as easily the biggest. It's ice-rink, police station, bus service, gorges, and football stadium, all set it apart from any University in England. It is in fact 18 times larger than Imperial College and I guess this size would justify not only a bus service but small airports on campus too!

I was amazed by the ease and convenience of daily life outside the campus and enjoyed exploring at the supermarket in particular. Most things with me come back to my stomach, as my mum will vouch forÉ I didn't normally buy anything you understand I just enjoyed looking!

In particular I would look in the cereal section. There were hundreds of types made of, cookie dough, bagel bits, trifle sections, you name it they had it as a cereal. Most of which I'm sure would be classified as a dessert in my local 'Safeway's' back home. Now that I'm back you can see why I always feel cheated out of choice when I'm forced to take home Cornflakes when I can't find my 'cookie dough and creams'.

Sure deep down the U.S. is the same as England and other parts of Europe, this I can understand. But whilst there's strange cars, insects that glow, clapboard houses, skunks, the 4th of July, no 'Eastenders', and sayings like, "How's it going?" and "What's up" (say with American accent). America will always be fascinating to me for its differences. And that's without even mentioning the different music, sport, the credit system at College, the huge portions at restaurants, the strange showers (that were always cold when I used them, but warm when used by others), epic adverts between television program's. And the fact that, even if it does say 'WALK' on crossings, there's a good chance you will still get run over.

This is what made my trip so exciting (and dangerous), and filled every day with so many new experiences.

And what did I miss most of all about England? I hear you ask.

'Warm beer, cups of tea, and fish 'n' chips'. Of coarse!

Philip Abbott, 1998

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