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What to do When you Hated Your Study Abroad

When faced with stressed with everyday life and a busyness of a hectic trip it can be difficult to keep up with a travel blog. I know this first hand because I struggled to keep up with the blogs I was assigned for this study abroad trip to London. I was so excited to go on this trip that I skipped out on taking one of my core curriculum classes that I’m going to struggle to make up because I believed that this experience was going to be worth it. Now, at the end of this term, I’m not so sure it was. I still feel like a subpar travel writer, I didn’t get the chance to enjoy much of the trip, and this (as only a sophomore level class) was so overwhelming that I felt it forced me to drop the ball in many other aspects of my academic and professional life just to barely scrape by. But, I suppose if I’m going to make such intense claims I should give examples as to why I feel this way. Before we even left for the trip there was still a lot of confusion about what exactly was happening
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Old City. New Food.

Stress, exhaustion and hunger: Three integral parts of long distance travel that we often don’t care to remember. We talk about the things we’ve seen, who we’ve met, and what the weather was like but we rarely acknowledge the blatantly negative aspects of travel. You might not think that sitting on a plane for six or eight hours straight would tire you out and make you hate humanity, but you’d be gravely mistaken. You’re achy, tired, pissed and hungry, but what you do to quell that medieval dragon lurking under your grimy sweatpants and baggy t-shirt? You feed that beast some awesome food. But you shouldn’t put just anything in your tank to keep you going. No, you’ve got to find something that is going to make you like the world again. And it just so happens, that the London food scene has something for everyone. When people think of British food they tend to think of bland scones, bangers and mash, meat pies, and tea. But there is so much more than that. There is a surprisingly rob
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Stationary Stories

Do you ever see a story when there isn’t one there? I do. More often than I should, probably. But it becomes increasingly easier to day-dream up these fantastical situations when I’m in a place filled with soul, ideas, and creativity. So, taking a fieldtrip to the Baltimore Museum of Art truly set my mind ablaze. It’s not like I haven’t been to that museum before, or any museum for that matter, but it was my first time really exploring an art museum in solitude. Professor Nyland gave instructions to write on what we found to be interesting and not skimp on any of the details, so I wasn’t exactly walking aimlessly. But, not feeling like I had to keep up with anyone and being able to stop and admire any piece that I liked was a relatively new experience. As I walked, I heard another patron say, “Jeremy’s dad would always quote, ‘Food wins the heart, but art wins the soul.’” I don’t know Jeremy or his father, but this quote rang in my mind as I took in the space around me. I began my
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Not That A**hole American

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Raise your hand is you’ve ever heard that Americans are super rude when we travel! *All hands raise* Good! That is the first step in our journey to not be dick wagons when traveling abroad!  This post is going to be a little off brand for me, but I cannot stress enough how important it is to understand social etiquette when traveling abroad. Now, I can’t say anything about etiquette in other European countries nor can I claim to be an expert in British etiquette, but today I’m going to share a few things that I have learned during my research and trip, that way if you ever find yourself in London you aren’t completely stranded looking like a jack-ass. And I am aware plenty of this is going to sound like common sense. If it does, good for you for being a socially adept individual! If not, listen up butter cup.  First: It’s pretty likely that in the city you will be using public transportation like the Underground and the Bus. I don’t know who has the money to Uber or taxi
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Curry! Bao! Bliss!

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When people think of British food they think of bland scones, bangers and mash, meat pies, and tea. But to my surprise there is also a robust Asian food scene. There is absolutely no way to document all the different kinds of restaurants I could have gone to in just one week. But my top two restaurants on my trip to London were called Thai Square and Yuu.  Now I absolutely love Thai food and I get it whenever I can. Before our visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum we were able to pick our own stop for lunch. And low and behold was a Thai restaurant called Thai Square on the corner. I ordered my usual, a Thai iced tea, duck curry, and rice. I know what your thinking. “Why would you order the same thing you always order? Don’t you want to try something new?” Well first off, every restaurant makes their curry different so I was trying something new-ish. And second, it’s my favorite so get off my case. The Thai iced tea was pretty average but there is just something about Rooibos
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Unexpected Genealogy

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Family history is a big deal in most cultures. Societally it determines what version of history we learn in schools and from our communities. In the United States, unless you live in a minority neighborhood, we do not learn about Hispanic, Islamic, African, or Asian/Pacific cultures. But this is very different in London. Over all the UK seems to have more readily available information about different cultures and ethnic group as the UK is surrounded closely by all different countries. This diversity is easily visible in their museums, specifically the Victoria Albert Art museum.  As an American it is expected that my genetic and ethnic backgrounds are a mixed-up melting pot of different regions of the globe. But in most cases people will assume you’re from specific regions based on your skin. If you are African-American you are either from an African country or Caribbean Island. If you are white people assume you’re European. And it is uncommon for the average white American
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A Palace Out of Time

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Deep in the suburbs surrounding London City is a quiet mansion neighborhood where huge houses stand in lines mere meters apart. Located at the very end of the street is a chest high brick wall and a large iron gate. This is the entrance to Eltham Palace, once a Tudor vacation palace turn 30’s millionaire home, now an architectural, design, and historical marvel for tourists and locals alike. Your first steps onto the extensive property are over a long, massive, stone bridge that once would have allowed passage over a mote but now serve as a viewing point for the gardens below.  The house itself, even from the outside, looks to be a conglomeration of the medieval and the modern. The entrance into main living space has the look of a 30’s building with it’s combination of brick and granite but if you merely look to your right you see stained glass arches reaching up to the sky like a church and what is left of the original ballroom. Before laying a foot past the threshold we were as
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