Featured Photo: My friends and I (from left to right: Anna Wasson, Emma Harper, Meredith Hickl) on the cliffs of Moher in Ireland while on a weekend trip! Traveling with some of my best friends was one of the best experiences I’ve had to date.
A Month in Oxford
My experience with the Study Abroad program at ACU was phenomenal. I attended a trip to Oxford with the English department where I took a course called Shakespeare on stage. This class took us to ten plays including four plays at The Globe in London and one in Stratford at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Studying several different Shakespeare plays in one month was quite the experience. Oxford is full of so much history that is connected to not only Shakespeare, but also several famous authors. While abroad, I also had the opportunity to travel to Winslow palace and Ireland.
Through my time in class we studied A Midsummer Nights Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, Henry VIII, Richard III, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, and Julius Caesar. During class, we would split up the parts in these plays and read them aloud, sometimes almost in their entirety. Reading these aloud and having our professor explain sayings, lines, adn historial context really unlocked Shakespeare for me as a reader. I am not an english major so going into the class, I was worried I would fall behind, however, I never felt this way. Being in class with undergraduate and graduate english students as well as two other majors ensured many perspectives that were able to interpret the plays in different and unique ways.
During my time abroad, I was able to spend significant time in Stratford and London with my class. Stratford-Upon-Avon was perhaps my favortie city in England. The small quaint town was full of buildings from the 1400’s, several tea rooms, and of course the river Avon. During our time in London we watched over half the plays on our plate. Attending shows at the Globe, the replica of the theatre Shakespeare would have preformed in, made the works of Shakespeare that much more tangible to me and my classmates alike. In London the other girls in my class and I became proficient in using the underground, walking to the Globe, and finding markets full of authentic food, fresh produce and meat, and amazing coffee.
While I learned much about Shakespeare during my time in study abroad, I also learned much about myself. Planning my weekend trips with my friends taught me how much goes into planning travel and how to adjust went plans went awry. The trip also taught me my limit for being around others and to truly make the most of my time. I found that I loved English countryside much more from the busy streets of London and that spending less on food and more on experiences will always be worth it. Walking around Oxford alone when pockets of time were available allowed me to practice being more self sufficient than I ever have.
Overall, studying abroad was one experience I will never forget. Not only did it make me more confident in traveling alone and with others, it gave me more motivation to travel more throughout my life to experience the history and beauty God’s masterpeice has to offer. Study abroad is one experience that will not simply live in my memory but will continue to change how I live in this world and interact with it.
Gelato in the UK is simply a necessity! This is gelato from a shop near Winslow Palace!
While in Oxford, the bookshop Blackwells is a rite of passage. This bookstore is three levels and sells repurposed journals made from old books!
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