I’m writing this on the end of my last flight today. See, the flights overall weren’t bad at all. The Chicago one was a tad bumpy but it is the Windy City. I’m excited to start the site seeing tomorrow specifically the British museum. The interior of the courtyard of the british museum is what I used for a precedent project for current studio project. I’m also looking forward to getting some sleep but all am happy and appreciative of the sleep I did get on the plane ride here. I’m nervous from the threat of the corona virus however, I don’t, want to let that stop me from my trip. Also the threat is not too high so I think overall the risk is low. I really want to see St Paul’s tomorrow because it’s a place I actually studied and wrote an essay on for a history class. So, it would be nice to see it in person and through practice actually study the buildings up close. Also, some of the details I read about St. Paul’s I couldn’t full find photos of so I’m excited to look for some of the specific things I have heard about from the building

Sitting in the airport waiting for our second flight is making me more excited to be in London than ever! Applying for this trip seems so long ago but suddenly we’re about to actually experience what we’ve been waiting so long for. All being together in the airport is getting me very excited to bond with everyone throughout the trip also. The class has gotten me so excited to experience London and all of the amazing things were about to see. In particular, I’m most excited to experience the architecture of London because seeing architecture while traveling is what initially sparked my interest in studying the subject. I am so excited to see the wide range of architecture that London has to offer, as there is old, historic architecture like Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral to look forward to, and also much more modern architecture like the Shard and the Gurken. I think the wide range of styles of architecture that London has will be create a really unique experience for all of us as students. Overall, I am so excited for this trip and have been so eager to start our adventure over to London as a class!

Hello All,

First off, I want to start by saying I am very excited to get to experience this study abroad with all of you. It is quite literally icing on the cake for me as a graduating senior. I originally scheduled for this abroad trip because I have not taken an architecture class since I took 2300 with Aimee and I have always had interests on both sides of the fence with a little less of a technical background on the subject of architecture. So, my visit to London is more of an experience I am hoping will make me ask myself questions on how the merging of green spaces and architecture are successful in a heavily urbanized city. Everywhere we go, cities are growing and the demand for green space has taken flight. It is interesting to see the mechanics of how these spaces function in relation to its context and what makes them desirable to inhabit. One good example in London I am mostly excited to explore is Regents Street and the system of green spaces leading to and from the park. I have seen systems like this in New York and Philadelphia, but it will be even more exciting to see them across the pond and be able to compare different styles or methods that aim to accommodate the general public.

Today we finally leave to go to London! I can’t wait to get to the city and experience a new culture and see all the things that London has to offer. I have been to Europe once before when I traveled to Italy, but I can already tell London will be a very different experience than that was.

I am looking forward to seeing everything scheduled on our itinerary during the trip. I am really excited to see all the architecture there, but I am especially excited to see the landscapes in London. Stonehenge and Stourhead are what I am most excited to see, but I am also looking forward to seeing all the beautiful architecture in the city. I am interested to see how the old architecture mixes in the city with the new architecture.

Overall I am overwhelmed with excitement to be able to visit my dream travel destination, and be able to do so with a group of students that I will hopefully become good friends with by the end of the trip. I think the trip will be a very inspiring experience for me and will help me grow as a professional where I will be always looking for new inspirations for designs.

After experiencing my very first flight from Columbus to Chicago, the trip went from surreal to palpable in one turbulent ride to be followed by another. I am very excited for the first night of sleep in another country as well as our first trip to St.Paul’s and really being able to navigate the area around our hotel and to orient myself in London. Being able to explore the city in different ways is important to me for the independence of our visit and being able to fully immerse myself in a different city and culture. Among the days spent traversing the dense city, I am looking forward to the days planned to break away from the urban area and be able to experience a more serene atmosphere of nature landscapes such as Stonehenge and Stourhead which have always felt sublime and unreal to me. I am also looking for smaller opportunities in London like markets in Covent Garden or getting a discounted ticket to a show, or even seeing a play. Once I get a feel for the city I am really excited to know my way around with a new transit system and be able to find unique places to visit in my free time.

I have been up since 9 am and I am still going strong. However, I am ready to go to sleep. I talked to a guy on the flight from the other group going to London and it seems like they have a similar size group. It was nice to see the cities at night and start seeing the sunrise in the air. The flight from Columbus to Chicago was extremely bumpy and I have not been on a flight that has had that much turbulence ever! I am excited to finally get to the hotel so I can go to sleep and start the experience as soon as possible. I am most excited to start going up into the city of London and seeing places from above. One of the experiences that stands out to me is going up in the London Eye. Hearing that it is timed so we can see the sunset is actually really cool. The other place that I am excited to see is the churches we are going to. Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral and Salisbury Cathedral should be really pretty and I have always had a love for churches so it will be nice to see three churches at that large of scale.

I couldn’t be more excited to finally be back in London. After spending the duration of the semester learning about the city and culture and sketching in class, it’s time for study abroad! We have all been taught well throughout the course of the semester and we should all know the map of London like the back of our hand and finally get to put our skills to the test. It is time to venture out into this global hub of culture ready to take the entire time in stride.

While I may be excited about having the opportunity to leave the country, I am also incredibly nervous to do so. Although I know in the back of my mind that everything is going to go smoothly on the trip, there is still the lingering threat of the corona virus. Thankfully OIA has prepared us well and I feel as though it will not hinder our London experience.

I am hoping that every student is as excited to experience something new as I did the first time in 2018. It is truly touching that I get to share my last college spring break with a group of all new friends with whom I can share and create lasting memories.

    I have made it to Chicago already and the thing I was really worried about has already happened. The turbulence on the ride from Columbus to Chicago was really bad but the next flight should be better since it will be a bigger plane. I have some time to calm down now and focus on the exciting part of this trip, which is making it to London. 

    I am ready to experience the lifestyle and culture in London and I am mostly excited about seeing St. Paul’s cathedral and St. Mary’s cathedral in Salisbury. I remember visiting Europe in the past and seeing the gothic cathedrals. It’s really cool to see the structures and level of detail put into everything and I think it will be mind blowing to see both of those amazing cathedrals. 

    I am also excited to try the new food and enjoy my free time wandering the city and meeting new people. Trafalgar Square is a place I can see myself going to after 5 PM. The tube system is another obstacle I’m worried about too but I think once I ride the tube a few times, it will get easier to navigate myself through the city.

I am very excited to get to London after waiting for this trip for so long. When I applied, it seemed so far away, but the time really flew by and now we are waiting in the airport to leave. I have never been out of the country, so this is a new experience for me. I’ve been to many different places but always in the country, so I have never been exposed to a culture that has many differences from mine. I am eager to learn about a different culture and it’s history. The most exciting part for me is to finally get there and start exploring a new city. I can’t wait to go to local stores and restaurants and see how they differ from the US. The site that is most intriguing to me is Stonehenge, I am very excited to get up close to really understand how large the scale of the site is. I am also eager for Stourhead and Kew gardens because I got a new camera for Christmas that I have excited to really test out. Every place on our itinerary is somewhere that I have only read about and seen pictures of and I can’t wait to experience them for myself.

As I am currently sitting in the Chicago airport waiting for our flight to London I am getting very excited to arrive in country and experience all of the sites on our itinerary. I am most excited for our day trip to Stonehenge and Stourhead. I remember learning about Stonehenge for the first time a few years ago and being amazed by it. I also remember seeing Stourhead in photos and thinking that it looks just like an ideal landscape in a painting. I can’t wait to finally get to see both of these sites in person.

I am also very excited to visit Kew Gardens as it is one of the most notable landscapes we will get to see. I originally wasn’t extremely excited to visit Kew Gardens, but after we learned more about it in class recently, I am eager to see it in person. I especially can’t wait to walk on the sky bridge because I like heights and I think that it will be a very unique view and way to experience the landscape.

I was too excited to sleep the night before our flight, so I’m not sure if I will be able to sleep on the plane either. I can’t wait to get started on our trip and begin experiencing the culture and all of the sites that London has to offer.

I’ll be arriving in London today and I can hardly wait. There are so many things that I have to look forward to that it’s hard to remember everything that we have planned. However, there are several experiences I am most looking forward to.

One such thing is visiting the British Museum. I am a big fan of museums and as such, being able to visit the British museum is an opportunity worth today’s 3 am alarm.

Another part of our trip that I am looking forward to is our day trip to see Stonehenge. Although I have seen pictures of it, I get a feeling that seeing it in person will be a completely different experience. The age of Stonehenge alone is enough to make me pause in awe, not to mention the fact that those super-heavy stones were transported miles and miles to end up where they are now.

Another aspect of our trip that I am looking forward to is Kew Gardens. Even though this winter hasn’t been particularly cold, I cannot wait to go inside the greenhouse and see some plants with actual leaves on them. The vast diversity of species at Kew Gardens is amazing; this trip, more than likely, will be my only opportunity to see many of these plants from all over the world in person. 

    Although those three things come first to mind when I consider what I am looking forward to most, they are by no means the only things I am looking forward to. I would be hard pressed to think of anything occurring on this trip that I am not excited for.

I am very excited to go to London! Today is the day of the flight out, it’s super early but necessary to make it out there by the end of the day. I can’t wait to get into the city and experience a new culture and be in a different country for the first time! I have flow many places domestically but the long flight out will be something new.

I’m looking forward to all of the buildings and sights were scheduled to see and even some of the free time to get a more organic feel for how the city operates. I want to explore how much style is different from the states with both places being tied in history, but England have a much deeper past than I am used to.

Overall, I think this will be a very constructive and inspiring trip educationally and personally. I Can’t wait!

I am excited for London first off because it is my first time in Europe. I have traveled out of the country before but never to a place like London. Therefore, I am excited to see a major European city as well as experience the culture as well. Furthermore, I am excited to visit sites such as Tower of London, Stourhead, and the British Museum. However, I am the most excited for Saint Paul’s Cathedral, due to the ornate details inside as well as the idea that it has stood the test of time and even survived the London bombings in World War 2. I am excited to take the stairs all the way to the top of the dome to get to see the amazing view out over London as well as seeing the infamous chapels located throughout the cathedral.  I would say out of the three other sites I listed above, I am most excited for Stourhead, since not only does it have amazing pieces of architecture, but the landscape seems amazing to immerse yourself into. Finally, I am excited to experience things such as riding the tube for the first time, riding a double-decker bus, and many other firsts that I will be able to experience for the first time.

I am so excited to travel to London! Never having been overseas, this will be an entirely new experience for me. I am excited for literally everything. This even includes the things that may seem dull, like riding the Tube. I am so interested to see what their public transportation is like, especially since Columbus’ is still developing. I am most interested to see the Barbican housing development and St. Paul’s Cathedral. Barbican was a development born as a result of war; therefore, I am really interested to see how that affected its development. Further, in photos and videos, it seems like a fortress, so I think it will be interesting to experience it first-hand. St. Paul’s is a major landmark for London and likely affected a lot of development. It should not only be interesting to engage with St. Paul’s in terms of the architecture, design, and its treasures within, but I think seeing how the city has developed around it will be interesting as well. I am slightly nervous about the climb to the top of St. Paul’s, but I cannot wait to see the city from such a height. I have had the opportunity to get to one of the taller buildings in Columbus, and it was one of the most amazing experiences to see the city from a bird’s eye view. Overall though, whatever the trip brings, I am excited to see it all.

Being interested in urban design, I’m most excited to study the dynamic contextual relationships that trace the course of London’s history in real time. From Roman ruins to contemporary high rises, there is a readily observable dichotomy between the here and now, there and then, as well as everything in-between.

I’m also excited to visit post Brexit as shifting cultural and political sentiments challenge the field of architecture. I want to know how people feel about recent occurrences in the UK as well as the United States.

A major reason I wanted to study abroad was to gain a global experience. Being able to sketch, photograph, and fully sense such significant works and how they tie into the city, will undoubtedly broaden my scope and hopefully play a major role in my future work. While in London I plan on investigating brownfield development versus green belt reduction with regards to housing. Rapid urbanization is a global phenomenon and finding solutions that can translate around the world should be imperative to those responsible for the built environment.

Being a truly international city, I’m really looking forward to trying food from as many cultures as possible. Also as a huge football fan, I can’t wait to attend a match during our free day.

The sites I am most excited to see are Kew Gardens, Stourhead, and Salisbury Cathedral. As a landscape architecture major, the incredible variety of plant species at Kew is incredibly interesting to me, and the different greenhouses look fabulous. I will definitely be visiting the Temperate Greenhouse, I love the combination of unique green plants against a stark white architectural background. Stourhead is, I think, very much one of a kind, I have never been to a landscape that takes a visitor through the story (except maybe Disney, although I would categorize that as something else entirely). In 2300, my favorite section of architecture that we learned about was Gothic churches. I love their haunting beauty, the way they look almost weightless, and the vast spaces inside. I am most looking forward to Salisbury in particular because the town has the medieval market, and I can’t wait to buy very unique items there, it will definitely be where I get most of my souvenirs. My main concern pre-departure is obviously the virus, I just hope that everything goes smoothly and that everybody stays healthy while we are there. I am also excited to spend some time getting to know London with my friends!