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The tombstone surrounded by tall grass has the year 1698 etched into it. This is my reminder, as I cut through the old church courtyard in my muddy rain boots, that I am not in the United States. I am in Surrey, England, where the deep-rooted stories of every market, bookshop, and schoolhouse make the story of my home country seem like a third grade chapter book. It’s four in the morning and I am tramping through weeds and wildflowers toward the village with friends I met earlier today, university students home for the summer, who grew up on these cobblestone streets. They used to wander to the Chelsea practice field after school to watch the players from behind field maple trees, and they had bought their prom dresses and suits in Princess Alice charity shop across the street to our left. We’re just entering the village, where light from the iron lamps mirrors off the old glass of the windows of empty shops, and a few candlesticks burn on windowsills. We peek into the half-open window of a pub that has closed for the night. Humidity sharpens the smell of damp wood from the inside of the pub. I would love nothing more than a cold Guinness right now as I spot the tap behind the bar. We walk in the middle of the street where a comical number of curious geese keep us company. It’s witching hour. The village looks haunted but in a beautiful way; I can feel the stories that have sailed through these streets over centuries. Walking past shop windows, I see things like children’s books, vintage scarves and purses, oranges, bouquets of orchids, bottles of gin, and chalkboard signs with announcements written in elaborate cursive. These items sleep along with the people in the little crooked houses around us. Even the weeping willows are still as we cut through an alley that takes us onto a dirt road next to a pond. One of the people with me, a German guy named Nino, points across the pond, with the same hand that is carrying a bottle of red wine, to a few buildings out in the distance. It’s the private school the three of them attended together. It was the kind of school where girls wore plaid skirts, and students passed notes in morse code and cut class to play card games in library alcoves. I ask them what they did for fun on weekends, and to my surprise, they say they would frequently walk to McDonald’s. “It’s actually down that way,” says Conrad, nodding towards the dirt road. “Is anyone hungry right now by any chance?” After a day of walking through glamorous London and eating macarons, I hadn’t planned on doing exactly what I had done in my high school years in my little all-American town. But here we are, walking on this dirt road towards McDonald’s in the middle of the night, leaving the sleeping, lamplit village behind us. The road brings us to a farm, where horses watch suspiciously as we trespass across the field under the open, charcoal sky, and we hop a fence at the end. Once on the other side, I see the glowing yellow “M”, a beacon of American capitalism in the English countryside. Between us and the beacon is a construction site—mountains of dirt, trailers, bulldozers, chain link fences—standing in our way. “Well this wasn’t here last time,” says Conrad’s sister, Cosima. “No. I’m still getting my bloody McFlurry,” Nino says and marches forward. An hour later, I am watching the pale pink sunrise from my seat in the bulldozer, holding a bottle of wine in one hand and a McDonald’s bag in the other. Ahead, I see the white horses over the fence in the distance and the Green Gables-esque farmhouse where a few lights are on. Behind me, McDonald’s is guarded by the chain link fences and mountains of dirt we had climbed and conquered that night. And sitting around me are my new friends with their dirty, scraped knees. "What was your favorite part of England?" I imagine people asking me. "The night I went to McDonald’s," I picture myself answering proudly.