Last year, I had the privilege of spending a semester in New York, with Falmouth’s sister University “Sarah Lawrence College”. You may recognise it as the school Kat wants to attend in 10 Things I Hate About You, but in the US, it is one of the most liberal colleges. And the most expensive.
Luckily, my tuition fees were paid for by the university so I was able to go. It was the first time I’d been on a flight longer than an hour, as well as the first time I’d flown by myself, but the seven hours squished in a plane with strange food were worth the magical four months I had ahead of me. Of course, there are some differences that are obvious; New York’s people are much more brash, in a constant rush, and they really do like their coffee. But what I wasn’t prepared for, was how different Autumn would be.
For starters, it was snowing in mid November. And what made this even more confusing was that wellies – or “rain boots” – were not sold in every other shop on the high street. Madness.
It was also Thanksgiving, something I’d never experienced in the UK and only heard of through multiple binges of Friends. This was a big deal. They had turkey for Thanksgiving, not Christmas, and had a huge campus wide meal to celebrate as well as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. However, as far as I could tell, Thanksgiving is mostly eating a lot of food until you hate yourself.
There was also the fabulous Halloween celebrations. People were dressing up during the day, and I remember attending a Halloween special gathering to learn about palm reading dressed up as the red queen. In the evening, I went to see an immersive play in which I was blindfolded on several occasions and taken through an interactive maze. It was absolutely terrifying; definitely the scariest thing I’ve ever done on Halloween. I was also by this point dressed as cat woman, so my high heeled boots did not approve of shuffling blindly around. The evening was topped off when my friends and I went to see a shadow cast of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, where people yelled things out and the cast played off of them. If you’ve ever seen Perks of Being A Wallflower, it was pretty much exactly like that.
But what sticks with me even now is how beautiful it was as soon as Autumn started to settle in. The leaves on trees in America take on more hues of oranges and reds and yellows and browns, opposing little Falmouth with its muted tones of dulling green and brown. They are both something to behold, but seeing’s America’s “fall” was truly breath taking.