<p>LondonIsCold:</p>
<p>tehlikeli Ask comments: “I feel sorry for you that you took no positives from your study abroad experience.”</p>
<p>I agree with her on this. Your post says much more about your limited horizons and blinkered attitude than it does about London. Perhaps you’ll get more out of living in other culture when you’ve matured somewhat and had more experience. I hope so.</p>
<p>Wow! thanks kathiep for directing me over here. I can only say that my daughter absolutely LOVED her semester abroad in London. With some great pre-planning, she and five other girls lived in a three-bedroom flat in a really, really nice area. Based on her experience over there, she’d move back in a heartbeat if finances would allow it. She said when her plane’s wheels hit the runway at JFK, she started crying.</p>
<p>Like ticklemepink, My son is also an English major and plans to take all lit and one publishing class in England - how cool is that?</p>
<p>Study abroads (I think) must change how you view the possibility of travel and the smallness of the world. After my daughter did a study abroad in Peru she went on to Kenya, England, a re-visit to Peru and now lives in China. Since she’s been in China she has visited Vietnam, Thailand and South Korea. Even though the UK has got to be one of the most expensive abroads out there we didn’t even consider not encouraging our son to go. I feel sorry that the young OP wasn’t ready to really enjoy her time in England and only saw the negatives.</p>
<p>I was sort of taken aback by the original post. My daughter spent last Semester in England and absolutely loved it. She went over knowing that she would most likely experience crummy weather..(most of the movies I’ve ever seen about England happen to show how rainy and dreary it can be, lol,..in fact I usually picture Brits with umbrellas) I went to visit her in April, and was mostly shocked at how well she handled her money, considering how awful the dollar is against the pound!! The trip is what you want it to be, if you ask me. She was fortunate to be in a program that took alot of side trips all over the UK, and during her Spring break, she was able to travel all over Europe. It seems like she didn’t miss anywhere!! My week there was rainy…but I didn’t care at all. We did all the touristy things together..castles, shopping and eating out..and enjoyed all of it. The people were as nice to us as we were to them. I know that when you are a guest in another country, its wise to try to adapt to that country’s customs…I didn’t expect them to adapt to mine! I’m a coffee drinker…the coffee there was ick! haha…so I learned to love tea.</p>
<p>My son is in Rome at this moment. He is absolutely loving it! He’ll be there for most of the summer..well, actually he’ll be in Arezzo, Tuscany. I think its wonderful that he and his sister have this opportunity to live in another country before beginning their lives when they graduate. The nice thing for me is that they are very grateful to be given this opportunity. Neither one took it for granted that they would get to go…but they sure are glad we managed to send them. </p>
<p>I’m sorry your experience in London was so bleak…but, it almost seems as if you had no idea where you were going, and when you got there, you were shocked that its actually a real modern city! Not much different then NYC, if you think about it. Almost everything you said about London could have been said about most of our cities, as well. You have to explore the cities to find the best parts…(that which interests you). If you’ve ever been to NYC in March or April…well, it can be pretty grim there too..yet its still one of the most exciting places in the world to be…Just like London, Paris, Rome..etc</p>
<p>Most of the time, I do think you get what you expect out of things..or what you put into it. If you want something to be fun and interesting, it will be..because you will find the things that make it so.</p>
<p>As a parent, I would wholeheartedly encourage kids to study abroad if they are given the opportunity.</p>
<p>as someone who grew up in the UK, all i can say is that if you hated it that much, both you and the UK would be better off if you didn’t go there again. I’m sorry that you didn’t have a good time though, and i hope you’ll give it a try again when you learn more about the culture and decades of history and regions the UK has to offer.</p>
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<p>I recently spent time in the UK…meant to stay for about two months, ended up sticking around for almost five. I wasn’t too interested in going because I felt that it would be too familiar (I was already living elsewhere abroad), but I was hard-pressed to leave and I’d travel back in a heartbeat. OP, the negatives that you cite aren’t givens…they represent your individual experience. We’re all sorry that it wasn’t a better one, but recognize it for what it was: uniquely yours, for better or for worse. If you’d like to present it as anything more, sweeping generalizations may not be the most productive way of going about that.</p>
<p>I think that traveling/living abroad is a valuable thing. Yes, there are ways of really maximizing the experience, but to anyone who has the opportunity to spend time outside of the country, I would never (barring special circumstances, like safety) say “Do it this way (in an ‘exotic’ country, in a homestay…) or don’t bother.” </p>
<p>– A Californian who appreciates aspects of English as well as midwestern American weather ;)</p>
<p>ETA: Depending on your school’s study abroad policies, there are likely more options than UK/Australia for English-only speakers. The other obvious ones…Ireland, New Zealand. Also South Africa. Perhaps Singapore. Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Ghana, Egypt, Turkey, Botswana, Nepal, India…I knew students who went to all of these countries on English-only programs or on programs that required one intro course in the local language. Like I said…options vary school to school, but there may be more flexibility than you think! Just FYI.</p>
<p>I had a completely different experience in England when I was a part of my university’s study abroad program. Although I was not in London, I was in Nottingham for a year and I have to say that it was one of the best experiences of my life. I was able to travel and I found the people to be incredibly nice and welcoming. I lived with 6 other people from England in a university flat. I became such a great friends with them that I still talk to them to this day. (5 years later!) I found the professors to be great and the university as a whole to be very accomodating and helpful to international students. I would definitely recommend studying abroad and I would also recommend England.</p>
<p>what an absolute heap of ****. i suspect it’s a bit of a ■■■■■.</p>
<p>as for your uk counterparts not matching up to american academic standards - complete nonsense. if anything it’s the other way round (my personal view is that both have deeply flawed pre tertiary education systems).</p>
<p>I haven’t been to the UK but have always wanted to visit Surrey, England. Hopefully (assuming I’m not too drowned in debt) I can spend a summer there.</p>
<p>Definitely don’t study abgroad in england if you cannot get used to rainy/cold weather. If you are from places like California or the South, you might have a hard time adjusting. I am from Seattle and when I stepped out of Heathrow airport, the weather was exactly like where I had left, I felt like I hadn’t gone anywhere.</p>
<p>I just today read this post so I’m extremely late to the party but I just had to reply.
Fwiw, our family lived in the UK for about 2 years (we got back in July '10). During our time there, my 2 daughters attended British school. They both cried hard when we told them were were moving overseas. They both cried almost continuously on our flight back to the US (as did I). We lived in North Yorkshire so we were a bit spoiled by the gorgeous countryside all around us. D1 mostly spent time with other American girls at school, one of whom seemed to always have some kind of drama going on. D2 got active in school sports (there were quite a few) and made tons of British friends and a couple American ones too. There isn’t a week that goes by now that D2 doesn’t express a deep and sorrowful longing to be back in the UK.
We moved from/back to Colorado so the climates were just about diametrically opposed as well. But we traveled like maniacs while there and saw many other countries while there. Why not? It’s so close, it’s a no-brainer! Neither girl will ever be the same for the experience and I’m happy about that.
Again, it’s a shame that OP did not like her stay. As the others so eloquently spoke, living elsewhere IS what you make of it. The funny thing is that one of D1’s friends and her family could not get back to the US fast enough. They complained quite a bit the few times I saw them (which I tried NOT to do). Once they got back, they immediately started reminiscing about England! Some people can never be happy I guess…
Whether the time spent in British school will help or hinder or be a non-issue for D1, currently a Junior in HS, who knows? D2 is now doing everything she can to get herself back overseas - mostly switching to a HS next year that offers IB.
So you never know how an experience that appears negative at first, can turn positive in the long run.</p>
<p>Well, I’ve never been to the UK, but despite what you say, I still really want to go. I hope to earn my undergraduates there, actually. I find the history and culture of Europe, particularly Great Britain and Ireland, really fascinating. Even if I don’t go to school in the UK, I’m going to spend a portion of my gap year (if I choose to take one) there. I just hope it’s not too expensive. :-/</p>
<p>I hope if you ever go to the UK again, you can enjoy it more. :)</p>