spatial anthropology
at the risk of essentializing an entire continent, urban America is a jolting contrast with England: the wide, sparseness of space; the crispness of line and angle; neon lights; sweeping highways, grids, blocks and corners; belligerent graffiti on the pavement -- or is that "sidewalk" to you yanks? I always used to think that Sim City had an incredibly artificial gamescape -- the isometric grid, the chequered network of roads, that ridiculous practice of commercial/industrial/residential zoning -- until I came to an American city and realized that Sim City had merely replicated (indeed simulated) a very particular and very real sense of space. ceteris paribus, Sim City would look very different if the French had been the first to design it ...
but there's a different sense of space with respect to interaction, too. waiters speak to you like they're your best friend; strangers lean in closer when they speak to you; conversation here seems to average out several decibels higher than in England; people you're introduced to for the first time immediately hug you or clasp your hand and shoulder. there's a kind of people-inclusiveness that, if you were unaccustomed to it (or British), would strike you as invasive. it recalls to mind a certain anecdote an Italian woman shared with me once: having been married to her decidedly English husband for a good number of years, she is constantly amused to find him squeezing respectfully around her, without touching her, when they encounter one another in the narrow hallway of their house. "English men," she snorted, "are ridiculous creatures, with a totally warped sense of propriety."
warped it may be, but my natural introversion has fed off this different sense of space for four years. so here, even at my most extroverted, I am totally mouselike. it makes me wonder a little about what I would be if I had gone to America for university instead ... and of course, all those related questions about what of a person is innate or a product of their environment (or an interlacing of both), which I have no time at present to expound on, as I am off to partake of the best. coffee. ever (omg, like, totally <3 seattle).