Here’s the second of a monthly series of columns I’ll be writing from abroad, as originally published in my hometown paper, the Barrington Courier-Review.

I started having trouble sleeping a few weeks ago. I don’t know if it’s late-onset jetlag or something in the water here, but my dreams have been super-vivid, my back and legs ache in the mornings and most times, I wake up expecting to be able to fly or thinking that I own a horse named Padre. (For all you dream interpreters and psychoanalysts out there, make of that what you can and let me know what you conclude.) I’ve since proceeded to rearrange all the furniture in my room according to the basic principles of feng shui and, perhaps most importantly, I’ve replaced my university-provided plastic mattress with a foam one I found on Oxford’s local version of Craigslist. Although my sleeping has gotten better and my dreams less dramatic, the muscle soreness persists. In a recent moment of brilliance, I realized that the aches probably have less to do with feng shui and more to do with the fact that, for the first time in six years, I’ve started riding a bicycle again.

Living in Oxford generally requires that you own a bike and that you use it often, because several centuries of history and development have resulted in a bit more urban sprawl than on a lot of American college campuses. Despite constant protest from my legs and thighs, I’ve committed to the way of life here and insist on cycling around town on a colorful, Schwinn-like secondhand road bike that screams “American trying to fit into the local scene.” Continue reading →

Here’s the first of a monthly series of columns I’ll be writing from abroad, as originally published in my hometown paper, the Barrington Courier-Review.

I remember in fifth grade when graphing calculators were the hot thing and everybody had one. It wasn’t that we wanted to do math and crunch numbers; we just wanted to play all of the games you could download onto them – most notably, Tetris. The time-pressure crunch of having to arrange oddly shaped blocks into neat rows proved addictive for many, but I for some reason never got hooked. Instead, I stayed true to my Garfield comics while watching the hardcore Tetris players from afar.

But now, as I write these words while looking out onto an English patio in an English townhouse in an English neighborhood in London, what comes back to me most vividly is that game of Tetris. One would think that adjusting to a country where everyone supposedly speaks your native language should be an easy process, especially when that country is the one that birthed you, in a historical sense, just a couple centuries ago. But it’s the little things that add up quickly, just like those blocks in Tetris that would come down onto the screen and were never the right shape and before you knew it you’d have a “GAME OVER” message blinking at you mercilessly. From the credit cards that use a chip and PIN system to British words (aubergine for eggplant, loo for bathroom) and a different sizing system for clothes, things are just (slightly) different here.

And so, when I tell people that I’m “studying abroad” on a Fulbright for the year, their immediate reaction is to ask, “Where?” When I tell them I’m going to be in England, their faces contort into a confused, even sorry expression: Continue reading →

Patrick G. Lee

thoughts on food, England, journalism & doing something worthwhile

Tag Archives: career

Spice Girls Wisdom

Here’s the second of a monthly series of columns I’ll be writing from abroad, as originally published in my hometown paper, the Barrington Courier-Review.

Hello, British people! (And a goodbye to Chicago hot dogs)

Here’s the first of a monthly series of columns I’ll be writing from abroad, as originally published in my hometown paper, the Barrington Courier-Review.

Here’s the second of a monthly series of columns I’ll be writing from abroad, as originally published in my hometown paper, the Barrington Courier-Review.

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Here’s the first of a monthly series of columns I’ll be writing from abroad, as originally published in my hometown paper, the Barrington Courier-Review.

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