To be honest, I wasn't really excited to go to school today. I mean, it was the middle of summer, I didn't want to sit in a class and do work. All of the under-18s took a van to Ruislip High School in Hillingdon, London. From the outside, the school looked a lot nicer than my school (which kind of looks like a prison). The first thing we did was go on a tour led by two year 12 students, which would be 11th grade in the United States. We looked into classrooms, saw the lunch rooms, walked through the schoolyard, and saw the gymnasium. We learned about how the schooling system works here. The high school starts at year 7 and goes to year 13. After year 11, you can decide whether you want to finish your last two years there (which is called sixth form) or go on to college (not university) or an apprenticeship. No matter what, by UK law, you have to be in some sort of school until you're 18. Sixth form is geared toward students who want to go on to university after they finish high school. At Ruislip, the sixth form students don't have to wear uniforms unlike the rest of the student body and they only study three subjects for those two years (so class times are set up similarly to university). We also got to sit in two classes: psychology and law. It was interesting because it was the last day of school but because they were year 12 classes, it was treated like they would just pick up on the particular unit they were studying after their summer break was over (whereas in the US, you get new teachers and courses after each calendar school year ends). Overall, the school was a unique cultural experience and something that was probably one of my favorite excursions on the trip. It was cool to talk with the kids our age in their classes and compare experiences. I wish that I wet to Ruislip High School.
Ruislip High School
Our other excursion of the day was to the Warner Brothers Studios outside of London. We got to explore the various sets from the Harry Potter movies. It was really cool to be that close to props, sets, and costumes from these iconic movies. The self-guided tour was all under one large building with a small outdoor section that had 4 Privet Drive and the Knight Bus. There was also a Butterbeer stand in the middle of the tour (it had a really long line, at that point I would just go to the Harry Potter world in Florida for Butterbeer). My favorite part of the trip was getting to see the model of Hogwarts Castle which is what was used for flyovers and to serve as a backdrop in some scenes. I thought it was cool because I always thought that those scenes were just completely CGI. Of course, you can't have a tourist attraction without a gift shop and I ended up getting Fizzing Whizzbees chocolates and a dark chocolate frog.
Dumbledore's Office
Hogwarts Castle
Back at the school, we had dinner and then prepared for a campfire later that night. I will say, the firepit was not safe it was surrounded by lots of trees (there was a tree branch that went right over the fire). We probably spent an hour at the campfire, singing songs with Ziad playing the guitar, roasting marshmallows, and watching the sky slowly become dusk. One thing that I thought was interesting is that the house parents bought jumbo "American" marshmallows at Sainsbury's for the campfire. It's interesting to see the international perspective of "America" which is equally glamorized and criticized.
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