Pecsi 1

Angela Pecsi
INTL-2980-001
Jerri A. Harwell
June 7, 2015
Final Reflection
When I study abroad my education grows faster than if I stay home. I live and learn
from the host culture; every interaction is an opportunity to experience and learn, and to
share culture with other people. My experiences translate into understandable benefits
throughout my life. I could see historic monuments and famous art first-hand. I could see
the academic system of another country as well as understanding the complexity of their
culture, including language or dialects. And last but not least, I learn to discover myself and
our world in a different new way.
London is thus a perfect place for examining how people use the world to
accomplish political, economic, and ideological goals. Although London is unique in its
own way, studying London had helped me to better understand every other city I may visit
in the future and its people too, because there are many mixed nationalities within the
European continent.
The archaeological resources, urban art and architecture, and community of scholars
in and around London to explore describe pretty well the purposes of the civilization.
London museums are world famous repositories for artifacts that reflect the nature of
human belief systems in different time periods and cultural contexts. The ancient
monument of Stonehenge designated by the United Nations as a World Heritage Site
submerges into aspirations that are universal and timeless. Londons contemporary
landscape, its public buildings, monuments, streets, squares, cemeteries, and gardens
preserve elements of every important era in British and, indeed, Western history.
With the study abroad group we had very good ideas on how to make it to most
places, try various things, and share with each other, which I think is great and we worked
well together planning our trips to get to know as much as we could.
Personally, I really did not expect England to be how I imagined it when I was
younger and until I stepped on the land of Europe. I thought Europe was not so loud as in
London, which can be compared to the neighborhood where we were staying; there are
persons who even go for walks at 2 oclock in the morning and the neighbors and civilians
told me it was safe. England is a very touristic country and another fact is that I noticed

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many immigrants from India. Also, the people there usually treat nice the tourists and I
could feel that when I needed to ask for directions or I got lost in the Underground. Other
thing I would not have expected from England is that much of the souvenirs to purchase
were expensive, even for things that would be regarded as not that special. And I see that
the British have a similar kind of humor than that of the American culture, such as in the
gift letters in the shops which contain funny messages, therefore, I would have always
thought that the English people conserved a cold attitude, but when it comes to the Queens
parade, they all behaved formal or I must say, elegant, which did not surprised me as much.
Now, talking about typical food, the British do not really have a great variety of dishes, so I
was a little disappointed with that and got bored at the time for eat. There are other small
facts that I noticed such as in the case that the people in the United States are mostly
focused on their smartphones when riding the TRAX, in Japan the people are in a rigid
posture, sleeping, or gazing at the environment, and in England, you see men and women
reading the newspapers. However, making a comparison to Europe and other countries
where I had been or studied abroad, I enjoyed England preferable because of its rich
history; I used to love studying Universal History, the World Wars, and all of its characters.
I enjoyed to listen to others talking in their proper languages, the diversity of
persons and groups studying abroad from Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Russia, etc. and I
liked to hear the British accent from the people that live there; I really tuned my ears to
understand them even on the audio tours at the touristic places, I also liked when they used
their colloquial vocabulary and said words such as bloody to describe something that did
not go so well or lovely to indicate that nothing is wrong.
Showing some examples of my adventures in England, the museum are very
amusing, you can learn a lot from them not only in subjects such as history but also art,
religion, among others, as in the Imperial War Museum, which documents important details
about the war epoch and we got to visit in our free time; the Tate Britain which contains
plenty beautiful paintings made with many techniques from diverse famous artists; the
distribution of education they apply for individuals such as in the University of London,
which is a conglomerate of buildings of areas of study such as a campus; without excluding
the royal castles and palaces.
If I would have to fix something differently from this whole trip is that I would
extent the amount of time that I/we would be staying because you certainly cannot get to
know everything in one month, and is hard to enjoy better if ones looking and exploring
the museums with a rush. Also, I think that the faculty of the institution should revise better
the schedule for the activities of the trip because there was no time left in certain occasions
to see everything that was planned, such as one day when we planned to visit the Museum
of London and we needed to consider that museums close early, and sometimes we traveled

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long distances to visit a place and then we had to return to the same area to see another
museum that was nearby where we were before. But, I agree that the college considered an
excellent place in an outstanding location for the students and the instructor to stay at.
In conclusion, I cannot predict how things will come up because not everything is
how it seems and the future is unpredictable. As last words, I acquired plenty of experience
from this Study Abroad course that I can say I can proudly apply for my whole life because
it made me more mature in how I understand the small but vast in knowledge world where
we live in.