The city of London now holds a special place in my heart in reality versus the fiction it merely was to me before. This trip was everything I could’ve ever dreamed of and more despite the world’s impending panic. Not only was I able to enjoy this experience with some of my closest friends, but I was able to make new ones and branch out with common interests and uncommon experiences. Being my first time out of the country, it was great having this group to be guided with and yet given independence. This gift of freedom allowed me to surprise myself in terms of navigation, and a new found love of London transit! I would have never guessed that taking the tube would be one of my favorite parts but it certainly was an experience I’ll never forget, along with almost getting lost when having to find my own way. Another of my favorite things that I could enjoy about London, especially when lost, was of course the architecture. Being able to figure out where I was based on the style of storefronts was actually quite helpful. We were given tours of some of the must see buildings, whether it was the brutalist maze of Barbican, which highlighted some beautiful features of concrete and made me more interested in brutalist projects and even the benefits of a community built around it, or when we craned our necks to see the top of skyscrapers only to find some of the most interesting parts at the mundanity of eye-level. One of my favorite parts about these towering buildings was learning the intricacy of manipulating past forms and ideas in ways to push structural limits whether it be suspending an entire building above train tracks or putting the industrial guts on the outside of a building to understand how these masterpieces tell us how they work. Overall, this trip opened my mind to a whole other world and I’ve been talking about it non-stop, and probably never will, but I wouldn’t have been able to wonder about brutalism, almost get lost on the tube, or eaten in a real London pub without Aimée for being our devotedly organized, even in chaos, trip advisor and dealing with the wrangling of kids that aren’t her own and to share with us her piece of London, Troy for always knowing the way, protecting people from playing in traffic (*cough* Tori *cough*) and recommending great food markets, Jeff for being able to set up an interactive iPad class literally anywhere so we can have a chance to participate while in the field, and all of my trip mates who made this experience that much more fun, so thank you all for this amazing opportunity!