Barron finished up his 7-minute photo montage he made that shows the highlights of our trip. Then, we worked on making a DVD that has both group's citizenship videos and the photo montage. It's a great keepsake!
After our LAST LUNCH in Digby Stuart Dining Hall, we all got ready in our "smart" attire to go to the Ending Reception / Awards Ceremony. We chatted for a bit and got to try the English-famous scone + clotted cream (yikes!) + jam... delicious! Then we moved on and got to see both of the citizenship videos as well as the photo montage for the first time! It was absolutely adorable... and a really good way to remember the trip and look back on everything we've done!
After the videos, the Vice Chancellor gave us all "awards" of completing the program, as well as a Roehampton alumni book and a little teddy bear that has a graduation cap on -- and he's holding his diploma in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other! :)
It wouldn't be us if there wasn't a silly version, too :)Then, us Fulbrighters got up there and gave out our gifts! We gave Tony and Kirsten a calendar -- each month has pictures of us and quirky dates on it to remember the trip. Then, we gave picture frames with a group picture in them to other people who made our trip amazing -- our student ambassadors, our lecturers, Laura from Fulbright, etc. It was great to be able to thank them for all of their amazing hard work in making our trip so memorable!!
Thanking Roehampton University and the Fulbright Commission for an experience of a lifetime.
After the ceremony, we all sat down with Laura from Fulbright to discuss:
* What stereotypes about the UK have been proved wrong or right.
* Has our opinion about the UK changed at all?
* What surprised us the most about our time in the UK.
* What has been the highlight of our time here.
* What has been our greatest challenge.
For me, I brought out my little pink book because it has become infamous to everyone (especially Tony!) that I would write in it if something surprised me. At first, everything seemed different. The second Alex and I stepped out of the Heathrow airport, we were shuffled into a taxi in which the driver was on the right side of the car and we were on the left side of the road. Alex can attest to how nervous I was in that car ride! Also, even with the taxi driver, I could foresee some language barriers just due to our very different accents! On our very first day, our trip to Putney with Louisa and Curtis took the cake for learning new things. For one, UK time is apparently way off... Louisa told us it would take 20 minutes to walk from Roehampton to Putney, when really it took 57 minutes (we timed it!) We had a running joke for the rest of the trip that if someone told us a time, we would clarify, "wait, UK time or US time?" On the journey to Putney, I even began to learn all of the different words between British English and American English. When we got to Putney, we watched the England World Cup game in a pub, where we got to see first hand just how important soccer is in their culture! The passion that came from that soccer game would only come from American football or basketball in the US. So, needless to say, everything seemed different on that first day.
At the same time we were learning all these words, I found that Curtis and Louisa already knew the American version of the words, even though they didn't say them. I found that so interesting how one-sided it was -- how I had no idea what the British version of the word was. That's when my big surprise of the trip came, which was realizing how truly far-reaching
"Americanization" has been. There were times when we would walk down the streets in London and see McDonald's, Burger King, Subway, TKMaxx, while at the same time being surrounded by posters for American movies and hearing American music. Sometimes we had to remind each other that we were in England!
In a sense, it was most shocking to not have a culture shock. After a while, I didn't even notice if someone was speaking to me in a British accent. In the beginning of the trip, I could do a fake British accent, but by the end I couldn't because I lost the ability to see the differences in the way I speak as opposed to how a British person speaks.
We also talked about any input we had for future years, since this was a pilot program. We really had nothing to suggest, as we all felt like the trip was truly perfect. The only thing we suggested was more information before our trip -- like a rough schedule, knowing that we'd be taking a class, etc, so that we could prepare better before the trip began.
But really, we had no criticism to add... instead we talked about how sincerely thankful we all were to have this opportunity. There was no such thing as a bad day! And honestly, besides the challenge of managing fun and getting classwork done, my biggest challenge was my daily battle with hiccups... which isn't so bad after all ;)
After we finished up, we headed to a pub in Putney with Tony and Kirsten as a last goodbye. We all talked about what we're going to miss about each other and what will forever remind us of each person. It was a very sweet way to sum up the trip :)
We headed back to Bede for our last dinner :( and for the rest of the night we all worked on packing, saying our goodbyes, and we even headed to a pub with live music in Putney for a bit of a break from packing. Because we were being picked up at 5:30AM, a few of us even decided to just stay up the entire night, which was really fun :)
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