As I go into my fifth month in the UK, I’ve started to realize that the big, underlying problem of being an American studying abroad has nothing to do with all the little parts of day-to-day life (for instance, cooking or laundry or buying essentials). It has everything to do with power. Or, as I’m coming to understand, a feeling of powerlessness that’s completely foreign to Americans used to being in complete control of their personal situations.

Last week, I was expecting delivery of a new bag from Timbuk2. The bag I bought last summer had a number of problems — including hinges that squeaked in a really annoying way when I carried the bag on my back, and a laptop compartment that wasn’t waterproof — and, after some intense negotiations with Timbuk2 customer service, store credit was issued and a new bag was ordered. Unfortunately, because the whole process of dealing with them was so protracted, I had to have the bag shipped to me in the UK.

After three failed delivery attempts to my apartment (my apartment manager, in his infinite incompetence, can’t manage to answer the front gate for deliveries that require signatures; which, in addition to his inability to fix our clogged showers or broken toilets, makes me wonder what, exactly, it is he spends his days doing, other than taking Wadham’s money and masturbating), UPS informed me that I’d need to collect the bag from their distribution center myself. In Headington. 17 miles away.

Were I in the United States, I would have either (a) sucked it up, driven to UPS, and collected my stupid parcel, or (b) called and complained loudly until a more agreeable resolution was reached. But in the UK, not only do I not have a car or the ability to easily go somewhere 17 miles away in an arbitrary direction, I also have a prepaid cell phone plan that charges me 20p (about 32¢) per minute for any calls, any time. For the same reason that my online banking still doesn’t work (calling to get it fixed is almost prohibitively expensive; I can see the Genius Bar appointments ticking away as I wait on hold), I was entirely unable to call UPS to handle what was a fairly straightforward delivery problem.

In the end, I went to the Sarah Lawrence program office and, on the verge of tears, explained my problem to the staff there. An hour later, my bag’s delivery had been rescheduled for the next day and to a different location where, without any problems, I was able to collect it.

But the original problems remain. When UPS, a week after delivering my bag, sent me an invoice for £24.14 in VAT and duties that I have to pay with my credit card over the phone, I was thrust back into the vicious cycle of having a customer service problem with no economically-viable recourse. (This isn’t even beginning to address the problem of how, after paying $50 to Timbuk2 for international delivery and fees, I still owe almost the same amount to UPS.) Mara wrote about the concept of “wasta” (which loosely translates to “influence”) in Oman as a determinant of whether or not you’ll get screwed over in everyday interactions; in the UK, it’s not “wasta” that I’m lacking, but rather a knowledge of to whom and how to cost-effectively express my concerns and exact resolutions to problems.

Living in the UK as an American is hugely frustrating, because the everyday expectations people have of you — things like having a driving license as proof of age, or a credit history for opening a bank account, or being able to use a phone that doesn’t cost thousands of dollars per minute — are things that, functionally, it’s difficult for me to manage. Over the years, I’ve become accustomed to a level of independence and savviness about how I conduct myself with regards to business, my personal finance, and transportation; being in the UK has completely turned that on its head. And, as I’m thinking about whether or not to come back here for graduate school, I have to wonder if it ever, really, gets better.