For sounds, I can hear the dry rustling of wind in the leaves, which is a soft chorus, and a crow cawing above me, as well as the thin, reedy sound of a songbird. I can also hear the muted, faint roar of cars and trains from the station. What was especially funny was, on my walk over, I could literally hear the squirrels crunching on nuts. It was so loud it startled me – they definitely don’t have enough fear of humans.

Unrelated: I am not really enjoying that it gets dark at 4:30 – sometimes it feels as if I’ve just woken up and then it’s dusk.

The land here is heavily developed – there is none of the natural wildness that Wellesley has (even though Wellesley itself is very cultivated). Green spaces are available, but they tend to be gardens and fields, nothing super wild, and they are generally very manicured. My host country has tried to enact sustainable practices. There are wooden utensils for take-away rather than plastic, as well as compost bins in the student kitchens. The to-go cups and lids are also all biodegradable. Public transport is also much more readily available versus places like the Midwest or South in the USA.

It relates to environmental justice because there are areas in the UK that are formerly industrialized that have suffered, either from pollution or exclusion from decisions on what to do with the land, or even from high unemployment after industrialization left (similar to issues in the US’s rust belt). Oxford doesn’t tend to be one of those towns, but some surrounding towns (and towns especially in the North of the UK) are dealing with this.