London changes you. A lot.
I remember my first day here, when I had no idea what the city looked like. Not to mention that I didn’t know that when people referred to the City, they meant something specific and not all 9 zones of Ggreater London. I didn’t know what an oyster card was and that I couldn’t travel without one. I didn’t know what the zones were. And I struggled to understand any British person as I was mostly used to the American accent.
Suddenly moving to London on my own and starting a degree didn’t look like a great idea anymore.
In less than two weeks, like many other students, I was utterly broke and still had no job. After two months I still didn’t know what the actual underground was like in Central, as I had a 2-4 travelcard. Following my instinct, I kept standing on the right left side of the escalator until an angry commuter would ask me to move. And I still was scared to cross the road as I never remembered which side to look at first. After six months I still didn’t know how to get around the City or Shoreditch.
It took me a long time to adapt, to fit in.
London changes in you in so many different ways. Obviously, it’s a bigger city than any I’ve ever lived in before. In my town everyone knew each other; in London I never ran into someone I knew, neither did I ever see the same person, not even at the bus stop in front of my house.
But the biggest change for me was to see the diversity of people. Being the only Asian child but also the only child of colour in my school for so many years, this change had a major impact on me. There were so many cultures mixing together and it was wonderful and gratifying and it gave me a bit of faith to see that people had better lives here. London wasn’t formed only by white people as most of the films I watched made me believe.
The next step and the most painful one was to understand that it still wasn’t perfect. Although every culture, tradition and race were different from each other and represented by so many people, as minorities we were still seen as one group. We were still seen as BAME or non-white people, we were still seen as migrants rather than expats, we were still facing oppression from the same offender.
Feminism, ethnonationality and so many other questions suddenly became suddenly relevant to me. London helped me see a new reality, it made me realise how blind I was before, when I thought racism and discrimination could never touch me. It made me question my past, but also want to fight for a better future.

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