Week 4: Boston-London Semester 2017
This week in the London semester, students went back to ancient times with a visit to the Roman Baths and the prehistoric Stonehenge.
Bath and Stonehenge were on the agenda for Team E. Team C traveled to Bath and Longleat, with a stop at Highgate Cemetery and a Thursday trip to the Globe Theatre to see Twelfth Night. Dean Natalie McKnight visited the students this week and joined them on a trip to Highgate Cemetery.
Other attractions this week: Space Spectacular at Royal Albert Hall and Edward Albee’s The Goat at Royal Haymarket Theatre. Akshay Pardiwala captured the Royal Albert Hall trip in a #TerrierTakeover for the ApplytoBU Snapchat.
Students visited the prehistoric Stonehenge and the nearby town of Salisbury eight miles away. Elham Banaie’s #TerrierTakeover on the CGS Snapchat showed the trip to Stonehenge, the shuttle up to the monument, and the rolling fields on the way to the Salisbury Cathedral– home to one of the original copies of the Magna Carta.
At Bath, students saw the thermal springs of the Roman Bath, another historic site that back centuries. CGS student Sarah Garcia’s #TerrierTakeover showed the sacred spring overflow and the student’s next trip to Longleat, an historic estate and park where students wound their way through the United Kingdom’s largest hedge maze.
Also this week, students began reflecting on the twenty-first century’s digital revolution. They discussed technology and reflected on what the Internet is doing to our brains and how it affects our internal memory. They examined the legendary London taxi driver test — possibly “the most difficult test in the world“–and debated the rise of “hyper-individualism” in the digital age.
Social sciences class gave a framework for understanding the journey toward to the twenty-first century as students studied the Holocaust and the Cold War. On top of classes and trips, students are also writing papers and working on multimodal assignments– for example, creating their own videos to show how England has remembered its deceased for the last two centuries.
Also this week, CGS Academic Advisor Ilda Hanxhari was available to meet with any students who needed academic advising support.
Throughout the semester, students are able to take optional social trips– to places like Harry Potter Studio Tour, Kensington Palace, and Edinburgh. This weekend a few students went on a weekend trip to Amsterdam, where they took a cruise down the city’s historic canals.
