While working over the summer for college students is pretty much a regular thing in this modern world, I was bummed to do it last summer, not for the more direct reason that I’d have to wake up early and take the train into Boston three or four days a week, but that I’d be doing all that while the rest of my family is off enjoying their July in Viterbo, a small working-class city in central Italy.

For those of you that don’t know me, my family has taken this trip for the past 10 years, as my father used to teach Illustration at two schools (only one now), one of them being the one that has this amazing abroad program. Before you ask, no, we don’t spend four weeks getting pampered in a villa by the sea, we live in an apartment right in the center of the city, surrounded by the natives, forcing us, whether we like it or not, to interact with everyone on a daily basis with our weak Italian skills.

This year, however, even though I happened to be working, I was able to take a few weeks off, one of those with my family in Viterbo, and the second in the UK. The only other time I’d been to the UK was when I went to visit London on a high school field trip. I was extremely interested, therefore, to see how the country was faring after their mind-boggling secession from the EU.

Honestly, the country did not seem to have been hit very hard, at least on a very superficial level. The people that we met and spoke to were some of the nicest we have ever met, and while public transportation did prove to be a bit of a strain on our family, I was only met by familiarity and comfort when I made my way to Piccadilly Circus to meet up with a friend of mine from home (that brainiac science nerd is doing stem cell research in London, thanks to Harvard).

What shocked me the most, however, was the fact that everything was so clean. In Italy, there seems to be a general consensus that if trash is near the trash can, it doesn’t matter whether it’s in the can or on the ground in front of it. In England, pollution of that caliber is totally frowned upon, and while there was a bit of it here and there, it was relatively small scale. Granted, these are not necessarily true economic issues at heart, but it is still interesting to see the comparisons nonetheless.

While #Brexit hasn’t made a huge change, at least from where I’m standing, it remains to be said that it still has left a considerable mark on the rest of the world and how they see each other. For example, there was some chatter at the time that the UK left that Texas should follow suit, as some people felt that they wanted to be free of the US, although nothing actually came of it, luckily. This country is facing enough duress without its own states seceding from it, too.