[Joint Post] THE WORLD’S gREATEsT CROSSOVER EPISODE by Anika H. '26

Note: Anika drew Anika and Jebby drew Jebby. If you can’t tell who’s who in the following series of pictures, you haven’t read enough blogs.

Everything is jarringly British in Bristol (wow what a shock). I know I’m in the UK, but it’s still surprising when I go to play a song and get an ad for body wash where everyone is talking with a British accent. The names are fascinating too. Under any other circumstance, I would have a hard time believing that Nempnett Thrubwell and Coombe Dingle are names of real places.

I’ve been here for two days and I’m really happy about my living situation, mostly because I’m in the same apartment with Jebby ’25 who’s chill and cool and awesome and super chill.

a place of culture

I’m scared to act as weirdly as I normally do in fear of contributing to the “loud unrestrained American” stereotype, so I did a bit of cultural research, including searching up a list of cuss words and their relative offensiveness so I can know what to avoid. I swear casually around my friends at home and I heard some cursing in the lab, so it might be somewhat okay, but you can never be too careful.

In public, Jebby and I both try to act normal, but at home we can use dudebro language and act as unhinged as we want. Based on observations, we can agree that we share half a braincell when we’re within the vicinity of each other.

Cooked or are we cookin’?

Considering the general reputation of British food, we decided it was best to cook most of our time here. Despite the expense of housing eating up most of our stipends, groceries were surprisingly cheap. After too many days of not eating real food, I was craving meat, so our first meal was a huge plate of salmon and eggs.

cooking our first meal in the UK

We ran into some issues in the kitchen though. There was no kitchen knife. I was stuck sawing through fish and raw potatoes with a butter knife until my collarbone hurt. Jebby got stuck in the corner spending an entire hour peeling 4 potatoes with the “peeler” that came with the kitchen supplies. You could probably peel faster with a seashell. We made it work though.

I think I tasted heaven in that first meal. I have drastically improved my cooking abilities since freshman year back when I was making rice cooker cocoa. Now, I’m proud to say I cooked so hard I knocked someone out cold for several hours (Jebby got a food coma because she ate so much because it was so good).

om nom nom

The Heeby Jebby’s

One thing I notice without fail whenever I travel somewhere are the local insects. I’ve caught at least 5 different species of spiders in California, more roaches than I can count on my hands in Boston, and have been absolutely fascinated by the fireflies and rhinoceros beetles in Italy.

Here, there seem to be a lot of stinkbugs and tiny little leafhoppers. We occasionally see an ant crawling around the kitchen, but I am glad that it is normal-sized and not the 1cm-long horse ants found further in the UK.

I love bugs. Jebby does not. She did not enjoy Noodle’s presence at all. I’m convinced she would be fine with the roach if it was more realistic, since the high saturation of the print made the bottom look really fleshy. Fortunately for her, I sleep with it at night so it stays in my room most of the time.

jebby scorns my beautiful child

Blogaholics anonymous

Hanging around another blogger regularly gave me a lot more motivation to blog, hence why you’re seeing two blogs in a week. Maybe I’ll run out of steam later in the summer as my internship picks up, but I hope it’ll last for at least a few more blogs. You’ll hear about my time at Bristol Robotics Lab some other time. >:D

Unless we are #artsy#inspired, Jebby and I both take frequent breaks blogging because creativity takes a lot of energy.

the blogger grind

Oh, and we have a nice bathroom

both of us enjoyed the very nice bathroom