Attack too much while away from home

As students here sat glued to the British Broadcasting Company's coverage of the terrorist attacks on the United States, many pointed out that the words "culture shock" have taken on a whole new meaning.\nThe attempt to squeeze a semester's worth of clothes into one or two suitcases was aggravating. The persistent wet chill in the air as early as September is disconcerting. And the embarrassing manner in which students are herded around London like 63-year-old tourists is worst of all.\nEspecially because that's what was going on Tuesday afternoon.\nMy class was on a tour of Bloomsbury, London's literary district. For the first time yet, I was managing to enjoy myself, because we had a tour guide who was actually more interesting than a door knob and spoke above a whisper. But then my friend's cell phone rang. It was 11 a.m. EDT.\nOur tour, thankfully, was coming to an end, and as we looked around the streets of London, we saw crowds of people huddled around radios and pressing their noses against pub windows to catch a look at the television. All around me, fellow students were bursting into tears and lighting cigarettes. And although everyone began frantically dialing home on their cell phones, it was nearly impossible to get through to the States.\nOnce we realized the futility of our efforts to reach home, we too crowded around a television. Many students were too nauseated to watch; it is one thing to be away from home, but it's another entirely to watch that home being ruthlessly attacked while standing helplessly in a strange and unfamiliar lace. \nBefore they leave for their new countries, students who study abroad are given a "diagram" of what culture shock is like; it resembles a graph, full of labeled peaks and valleys. Several hours into the patchy and infuriatingly insufficient BBC coverage, one student pointed out that OUR graph should have been revised to include a point labeled, "home country blown up by terrorists." It would have been off the chart.\nSo, four days later, we are still trying to find a balance between grief and stoicism. We are surrounded by Brits who repeatedly say, "So sorry for your loss," unwittingly reminding us that it is OUR loss indeed, and we have only each other to share it with. We have no compass against which to measure our behavior, and we wonder if we are "allowed" to discuss anything other than "our loss."\nServers give us free desserts in restaurants, and British motorists have stopped trying to plow us down in the crosswalks, but we don't know how to respond to a tragedy in our own homes. Some indulge their sadness, while others use physical distance to deny it. But either way, our feelings are of removal, confusion and rapidly intensified camaraderie.\nThey warned us about culture shock, but no one signed up for this.