Author: Grace Coburn

Hey everyone, as I’m nearing the end of this program I’ve realized that I’m only posting blog posts when I go on a trip somewhere. I think that’s because my everyday life here has already become so normal for me that it doesn’t feel like anyone would want to hear it, which I guess is the point of this whole experience: be immersed in a culture so fully that it becomes the norm. Now since my daily life here is still a little bit of a mystery to my family and friends back home, I thought I’d make a little “day in the life” post for an average school day for me in England, so here goes.

6.00am

My alarm wakes me up at 6am and (after staying in bed for maybe a little too long), I get ready and leave my house at about 6.50am to walk to the bus. My first bus takes about 50 minutes so I end up in Wolverhampton at around 7.55.

8.00am

While I wait for the bus that takes me to school, I stop at Gregg’s to get a regular cappuccino and a chocolate muffin. (Very nutritious, I know.) I get on my bus and it arrives at my school at about 8.30am, where I meet up with friends before my first lesson at 9am.

9.00am-3.00pm

I’m in lessons from 9am until 3pm, starting with my first lesson as a double lesson from 9am until 11.30am. Then I have break until 11.50am, where I’ll walk around outside with my friends if it’s warm out, or I’ll get a sandwich from the school and stay inside and listen to music. My next lesson is from 11.50am to 1.05pm, and after that I have lunch until 1.45pm, where I’ll eat lunch and then hang out with my friends again. My last lesson is from 1.45pm to 3.05pm, and after school I’ll walk with my friends to my bus stop.

5.00pm

Once I’ve made it home and settled back in for the night, I’ll usually either do some homework or skype my family or one of my friends from back home until dinner at around 6.30pm. After dinner I’ll shower or watch TV until about 9.30pm, when I’ll get ready for bed.

As I said, a typical day seems pretty mundane (at least to me). Some days I’ll take the train into Birmingham after school to hang out with other exchange students and have dinner, or I’ll stay at school after for a little to do work with school friends. Even though it all seems really normal and average for me now, I’m cherishing every second because I know that when I leave soon I’ll miss all of it!

Over our Easter holiday, I went to London for two days with some exchange student friends, and I decided to make a little video of the trip instead of a normal blog post, so here that is!

Thanks for watching!

One of the gorgeous buildings I saw in Oxford.

On Saturday, Study Abroad UK took us on a day trip to the beautiful city of Oxford! We took a coach from near our house that left at around 8:30am, and it took us around 2 hours to get to Oxford, where we all got off the bus and walked to Christ Church College to meet up with the other bus of students. We took a group picture and then walked through the college, looking at all the old buildings and roads.

Looking down a little street in the city.

Our tour guides showed us our meeting place which was the Information Centre in the middle of the city, and then set us free for 2 and a half hours of free time. I went into the Information Centre with some of my friends to buy a map and some postcards to send home, and then we left in search of some lunch. We walked down to the covered market and looked around. We stopped on the way at a little fudge shop where they gave us free samples and then we bought a slice of dark chocolate to share. We found a little cafe where we all got sandwiches and pizza baguettes. After eating we walked back towards the Information Centre and looked around in some of the shops. I bought a couple souvenirs to send to my sister, and then my friend and I got crepes from a little stand. She got Nutella and I got Nutella with banana. They were so good!

The amazing crepes we got!

After eating them we met up with the group again and walked to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. My friends and I walked around in the museum for a little and took pictures with the dinosaur bones and all the other cool things in the museum. Then we walked to a cafe in a bookstore and got coffee and hung out until we had to meet back up with the group to take the coaches back home.

It was a really fun day and I loved getting to just wander around the city. All of the old buildings were so pretty and it was really cool to see all of the details in all the architecture. I really hope to get a chance to go back there sometime, and I can’t wait for all of the other trips Study Abroad is going to take us on.

So I’ve finally arrived in England! The past week and a half have flown by! I’ve been so busy with my new host family and school that I’ve barely had time to sit down and get all my thoughts out.

The house I’m staying in is very cute, and right next to the bus stop and a Sainsbury’s (a little grocery store). My host mom, Annette, was very welcoming and nice, and her dog, Bonnie, is just the sweetest thing. I’m staying with another student from Germany, named Sophia, and we’re the same age and going to the same school, which has been really fun so far.

This picture is from the bus stop of the second bus my host sister and I take on our way to school.

My school starts at 9am, which makes mornings feel so much less rushed than back home, when my school starts at 8am. The classes are an hour and 15 minutes long, but I only have 4 lessons in a day, and I’m only taking 4 classes in all! It makes it really nice because it means that I have a lot of free time with the lower amount of homework I have.

Some days after school my friends and I stop in at the shopping center in the middle of town just to look around in stores like Primark, which I never get the opportunity to in my town in the US. It’s really cool being able to take just a 10 minute bus to be in a small city, and then a twenty minute train to be in Birmingham. I’ve never gotten to experience living this close to a city before, and it’s been interesting so far to get the opportunities a city has.

It’s all been very interesting and new and strange, but some of the weirdest things are definitely the most simple, such as the spelling of words like ‘centre/center’, the larger size of the paper used in school, and how ‘hair ties’ are sometimes called ‘hair bobbles’ by my friends. Another one of the weirder things is hearing myself being referred to as “the foreign exchange student”. I had never really thought of myself as “the new kid”, but it was very interesting to see how easy it was to make friends as the foreign student, because of how intrigued everyone gets when they find out I live in America. (And close to New York!)

Last Saturday, we had an orientation for all of the UK Study Abroad students, which was really fun. We all met up outside of the Wolverhampton train station and walked over to the University, where we were given a small presentation about the program and introduced to our support officers. Afterwards I and a couple of other students decided to take the train into Birmingham where we all had dinner, then did a little bit of shopping. I bought a lot of sweaters, because it’s always so cold here! After the shopping we all took the train home and then caught our buses back to our host families’ houses.

Here’s me and another American student posing on the train.

So far it’s all been really fun, and I’m getting more and more excited for the rest of my trip, especially some of the trips with the Study Abroad Program, because they’re taking us to so many cool places! I hope to write more often soon as more and more things happen, and hopefully I’ll include more photos in future posts!