{"id":86,"date":"2016-04-26T09:26:28","date_gmt":"2016-04-26T09:26:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/visitingstudents\/?p=86"},"modified":"2016-06-06T09:40:24","modified_gmt":"2016-06-06T09:40:24","slug":"missing-the-love-of-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/visitingstudents\/2016\/04\/26\/missing-the-love-of-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Missing the Love of Home"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In one of my favourite romantic comedies, <em>What a Girl Wants<\/em>, the heroine Daphne tries at one point to hug her new British grandmother, Lady Jocelyn Dashwood. Lady Dashwood is startled and pushes Daphne away, saying, \u201cI\u2019m British. We only show affection to dogs and horses.\u201d<br \/>\nI know that is far true in practice, having lived in England for almost four months now. But there are times when I feel like there\u2019s some truth in the idea. English culture seems to have a different concept of personal space than I\u2019m used to at home in the States. I didn\u2019t realize this until I met my mother in France for a week during my Easter Break from Lancaster. I\u2019d missed her so much, and I couldn\u2019t stop giving her hugs. It wasn\u2019t that I hadn\u2019t been hugged while at Lancaster, because I had. My \u201cLancaster mom,\u201d Jan, who\u2019s one of the leaders of the student group at the church I joined, hugs me whenever she sees me. My flatmate Aaron gives me hugs when I seem down or when he\u2019s in a particularly happy mood. But overall, there has been a significant decrease in the number of hugs I have both received and witnessed while abroad. This isn\u2019t a bad thing; it\u2019s just different. It\u2019s very respectful of one\u2019s personal space, in a way, and I guess that\u2019s actually a good thing.<br \/>\nWhen I see two friends meet up for coffee or lunch on campus, they don\u2019t hug hello. When I left for break, I hugged only two out of my seven flatmates goodbye\u2014one was Aaron, and the other was Katherine, with whom I\u2019d had a discussion about hugs the night before, so I knew it was okay. When my flatmate Ashley moved out and he came into the flat for the final time, I wanted to give him a hug goodbye, but a little voice in the back of my head told me that it might not be culturally appropriate, so I held back. I may be reading too much into this, but it\u2019s just a little thing I\u2019ve noticed. I\u2019m so used to being affectionate with all my American friends, and honestly, I\u2019m one of the least affectionate people in my group at home. When I get back, I guarantee I\u2019ll be tackled by all of them. So while I love Lancaster and the people here, I do miss some of the little things, like hugs. A lot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In one of my favourite romantic comedies, What a Girl Wants, the heroine Daphne tries at one point to hug her new British grandmother, Lady Jocelyn Dashwood. Lady Dashwood is startled and pushes Daphne away, saying, \u201cI\u2019m British. We only show affection to dogs and horses.\u201d I know that is far true in practice, having [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":472,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iowa-usa"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6ZhFD-1o","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/visitingstudents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/visitingstudents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/visitingstudents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/visitingstudents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/472"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/visitingstudents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/visitingstudents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/visitingstudents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions\/89"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/visitingstudents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/visitingstudents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/visitingstudents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}