Being one of just 12 students to go to the ACS International School in Cobham, UK, I spent the seven hour plane ride thinking about what I wanted to gain from this trip as it was my first one through the school. As I flew home, the trip was a mixed bag of great opportunities with some unexpected experiences.
When signing up for this trip, I was super excited to get the entire London experience. While I expected the average exchange trip experience, we found out one week before leaving that we would not be doing the typical homestay, and would be staying at the boarding houses on ACS school campus. As this was not expected, I did know what to prepare for when staying at a boarding house. With this, we received two shadow buddies that would guide us through the trip.
Staying at the boarding house was a much more different experience than what anyone had expected. I honestly had no complaints about the school food, but it lacked the home cooked British food that I had hoped for. With this there was also a lack of transportation, most typical homestays have transportation provided by the host family. Most of our group from the U.S. relied heavily on Uber’s and train stations as our form of transportation, which ended up taking a toll on our bank account.
I had originally expected to learn a lot of British culture from this trip, but while staying at the school, I had a very different experience. I did get lots of UK aspects along with worldwide culture because ACS was an international boarding school. So while staying on campus meant that we may not get the typical British experience, we encountered other boarding students from all around the world. We met Ukrainians, Mexicans, Canadians, Koreans, and Russians, just to name a few. This was by far one of the coolest experiences I gained from this trip because I was able to connect with people from all around the world, learn about their culture, and hear their stories. It was an incredibly significant experience as I had originally expected to only learn about the UK, but was met with the surprise of learning multiple different cultures in a one week trip.
Our trip to London was pre-planned and had an almost completely full itinerary. While they had a lot of typical things that someone traveling to London would want to see, they also included a few historical sights that we could learn from. I had fully enjoyed each day that was planned out, I would only wish for a little bit more free time. The itinerary only included one free day to do what we wanted, so we had to squeeze in a lot of things that were not on there in one day.
While staying at the school, we also had to abide by boarding rules, which meant following the school schedule, even when we were not attending school that day. We had early breakfast along with a curfew at night, and since the itinerary was created before we knew that we were staying at the boarding school, we had to get the bus back at the school by 3pm so it was back for the end of the school day. While this meant we had to cut our exploring short, this also allowed us to go back to the school and interact with more students from around the world, which provided a very impactful cultural exchange.
While this trip had a lot of unexpected changes that I had to adapt to, the outcome of the experience was so much more than I had expected. Being able to meet new people from all around the world and share aspects of culture and opinions on different things going on around the world was an incredible experience. I would definitely encourage students to apply for a cultural exchange as I would definitely go on a trip again.
