Memories of London

When just a few sprinkles of rain fall at the University of Texas at Tyler and everyone begins pulling out umbrellas and rain boots, I cannot help but be amused as I think of how the rain would be perceived in London, England. In a city world-famous for the amounts of rain that it receives annually, people barely pay any mind; Londoners would consider the sprinkle a mere mist. It’s also moments like this that make me think back to the time that I spent in London.

In the summer of 2011, I received the opportunity of a lifetime when I got to spend an entire month in London studying sociology through the British Studies Program. This program is one of the many opportunities to study abroad that UT Tyler offers (though the BSP is also in conjunction with the University of Southern Mississippi), and it was a perfect fit for me.

I really appreciated the fact that while I was in London, I was not there as a tourist. I legitimately was a Londoner for the month that I lived there. Despite being extremely jet-lagged, on the first two days that I was in London, I took several whirlwind tours around the city with the rest of my classmates to get acclimated to the city quickly. I lived in a dorm (also called a “flat”) that was in central London, literally just five minutes from Waterloo Station. I rode “the Tube” and the buses on a daily basis to get to various sites, utilizing a pass called “the Oyster Card” that Londoners use.

The format of my class was unique in and of itself. As opposed to spending day after day in a lecture hall, my classmates and I heard some lectures from our professor in the classroom on some days. On other days, a guest speaker native to England—or another part of the United Kingdom—would come speak on their field of expertise. The experience that was most common for my class, however, was to travel to a specific place and to learn about that place as we were actually immersed in it. While at the Charlton Athletic Football Club, I learned just how important football (or soccer as it is called in the United States) may be to a British person. While in the city of Canterbury, I learned--and witnessed--how destructive the World War Two Blitz was to this city.

There is definitely nothing like learning about the history and culture of a place while actually living there. Have you ever been to another country? If so, where have you gone?  What were some of your best memories?