Londinium

A couple of weeks ago I went on a class trip with a bunch of the 8'th graders at my school to London. Around the beginning of the year my mentor at school asked me if I'd like to come along and chaperone, and, of course, I answered with a resounding yes. The summer after my freshman year I did a short study abroad program in London, and absolutely loved the city. That was my first real experience of being out in world on my own, and the first time I'd ever traveled to Europe before, and the whole thing left a huge impression on me in a lot of ways. It hugely influenced my desire to even consider living outside of the USA. I really count it as one of the most influential experiences in my life.

Plus, the city of London is just cool as hell. Having traveled in a fair number of cities on the continent and lived here for a while, I can say with a fair amount of authority that there's no place like it on Earth. The size of it, the energy, the crush of humanity in places like Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Street, the culture and life you see walking along the South Bank of the Thames--it's really a place unto itself. One of those irreplaceable places in the world. I was really enthusiastic to return.

Anyway, we took off on a Sunday afternoon on an Easyjet airplane and got into the hotel late in the evening. It was interesting seeing the students' reactions to being out of Germany. I think it was the first airplane flight that a lot of them had ever taken, and many of them said it was the first time they'd been this far away from Hamburg. All in all they handled it pretty well. There was a pre-selection process to make sure the students who went along wouldn't cause any problems on the trip, so all of the 30+ students who came along were really well behaved and fun to be with.

That was actually one of the best aspects of the trip: the fact that I could spend more time with the students and get to know them more than I otherwise would in school. You'd think that after spending whole months working with these guys that you'd come to know them pretty well, but I find the opposite is true. The ones who really participate a lot in class of course get more attention and stick in my mind, and when I'm walking around in the courtyard I stop to chat to groups of students often, but on several occasions I've stumbled upon a student in a class who I didn't even know existed since they're so quiet and never raise their hand. There's so much more you have to take into consideration and pay attention to when trying to teach a class than the students themselves, which makes it hard to get to know them as people.

On the trip, however, I got to spend a lot more time with them, chatting and fooling around and cracking jokes. Ironically enough, most of them didn't speak any English to me unless they needed me to translate something or were feeling particularly virtuous and wanted the practice, so it was great for my language ability. I spoke way more German in England than I ever do when I'm in Hamburg, and I had to communicate some difficult concepts to them the whole time: translations of/explanations of art exhibits and monuments; when we're meeting for lunch/dinner/a tour and at what time; why cultural oddity X is how it is in London; why you "shouldn't touch what you don't understand" because that button you just pressed was the emergency call intercom for the London Eye, etc.

Anyway, the whole week would be way too much for one post, but I'll put up the highlights anyway:

1) Taking a group of students to tour and take pictures of the Arsenal stadium after dinner one night. It was particularly cool to walk around the stadium and just see what there was to see. At one point we came across a father and son passing a soccer ball back and forth, and we asked if we could join them for a while, which they agreed to. On the train ride back we also ran into some locals heading home for the night and we sparked up some conversations between them and the students.

2) Leading yet another group to the Tate Modern Gallery to check out the museum. I think a lot of them were confused and bored by all the modern art displays, but while we were going through the museum by ourselves I ended up bumping into one of the girls, and we walked through the rooms together. I sort of "directed her thinking" about the exhibits as it were, offering up little bits of interpretation just to give her a better idea of what everything means/could mean, and by the end she was dragging me from exhibit to exhibit asking me what everything was and what it meant. That was a really special thing for me anyway--to think I might have been the one to introduce a kid to art and maybe spark their interest and appreciation in it.

3) Being back in the city period was wonderful too. The sheer joy and nostalgia of being back in a familiar place is just indescribable. I hadn't been back since summer 2009, but I still hadn't forgotten how the whole things fits together, the stops on the Tube, the feel and look of the city. It was great walking through it all, kinda like walking through a memory while living in the present at the same time.

I'll leave you with a few pictures I took that week

I think you all know what this is!

The London Eye, the biggest ferris wheel in Europe.

A shot of St. Paul's Cathedral with the Millennium Bridge and the Thames

Me outside of Arsenal's Stadium.

A shot from the Churchill War Rooms, a museum built
in the secret war facilities from which Churchill led WWII.

When I was backpacking here in 2009 I took a picture of this
poem on a sidewalk tile on the South Bank. I really like it.

The outdoor book shop on the South Bank. I bought The Manticore
by Roberston Davies.

In the London Eye!

The kids would recruit me to take group photos from time to time.
I think there are like eight cameras hanging from me.

At the end of the trip some of the students bought me chocolates for
leading them around the city and helping out and translating.
Like I said, really nice kids :)