Trip to the UK

At the end of May/beginning of June, I took a trip to the UK for work as well as to visit my sister and her family. The work bit has to do with the fact that OSU has decided to partner with a British company called INTO to provide English language classes and recruit international students, a controversial decision and something I definitely have mixed feelings about, but I won't go into that here.

My trip started with four days in Scotland visiting Kristi, John, Thomas, and Beth. This was quite the treat as we didn't have any trips to visit them planned and I wasn't sure how long it would be before I made it out there again.

As usual, my time with them included several visits to playgrounds, this first of which was at Drumlanrig Castle. The castle looked lovely, but we didn't actually go inside as we only had time to visit the tea room and playground (we had priorities, after all).





Along the way to the castle we saw a lot of construction (which is why we had so little time to see the castle) and a multitude of sheep, which was unfortunate as Beth felt compelled to yell "baaa" at the top of her lungs to each sheep we passed. I guess the advantage to this was that it kept me awake, which was helpful as I was still getting over jet lag.



We also visited Pollok Country Park were we enjoyed the gardens . . .



. . . walked past Pollok House . . .



. . . said hello to the highland cattle . . .



. . . and of course found our way to the playground.



While in Glasgow I also visited Glasgow Caledonian University, which is also partnering with INTO. I enjoyed talking with their faculty and staff and sitting in on a couple of their classes.

My time in Glasgow was fairly short (4 days), but actually turned out to be the ideal length to visit family (usually they have to put up with us for a fair bit longer in order to justify the long and expensive flight over there).

Next I headed down to Newcastle where I met up with an OSU work colleague, Donna, and visited the INTO program at Newcastle University. It was interesting to learn a bit about both Newcastle the city and Newcastle University and meet colleagues their as well.



Our stay in Newcastle was short, however, and less than 24 hours after I had arrived, we left for Norwich, where we were attending an INTO conference at the University of East Anglia. The conference was intriguing, especially in terms of comparing the British education system with that in the U.S. and in getting to know colleagues in another part of the world. Donna and I also had a little bit of time to explore Norwich, a charming town that supposedly "has a church for every Sunday and pub for every day of the year." We particularly enjoyed wandering the narrow, winding streets and taking in Evensong at the cathedral.













Overall, I had a very good trip. I've discovered in the traveling that I've done thus far in my life that the best trips are those that include time with people, rather than just sightseeing, and this trip was successful in that way, both because I got to catch up with my sister and her family and because I really enjoyed getting to know colleagues in the U.K. While I believe that the jury is still out concerning whether partnering with INTO was the best choice for OSU, I can certainly say that the people who work for INTO made me feel very welcome during my visit to the U.K.