POHS London A-Term 2019

The opportunity of traveling to London along with my classmates and teachers for 10 days was a greatly significant experience for me. Even through such a short time, it helped me widen my knowledge of the city, and develop my identity and independence as an individual. Through our journey throughout London, I grew to understand the deeper meaning and connection throughout all of the landmarks, buildings, etc. that we visited every single day until we left. One of the most important parts and benefits of this trip was education, and the knowledge gained, but what I think was also equally as important was that spending 10 days consecutively with the same exact people, helped getting you closer to some of your classmates that you might've never even talked to before at school, but by going on this trip you were able to talk to them and find out things about them that you never even knew before, and you were able to get this type of chance by going on this trip. For these reasons, th...

London Final Reflection I remember when this trip was announced, everyone wanted to be a part of it. I was surprised to discover I was one of the twelve people selected to go to London. The many following meeting and planning only furthered my excitement and anticipation. I couldn’t actually comprehend that I was going on an international school trip to London , one of the biggest, most diverse, and history rich cities in the world. Even now, sitting in my room on the day before we go back home, I still can’t fully comprehend the fact that I am currently here. The first 34 hours of this trip were absolutely mind-numbing, but not in the bad way. Stepping out onto the streets of London after an eight hour flight was honestly probably too much for my brain to process. The long string of events after landing each contributed to an aspect of this trip that I would eventually find to be running motifs: housekeeping & maintenance, group travel & transportation, and exploring ...

Cassandra Wilson March 31, 2019 London A-Term Reflection Awake in a Dream As I am writing this, I can not believe that I am already back. What happened to time? Why did  everything race by so quickly? Was this all just another one of those nostalgic dreams, and have I just woken to another day in Houston? No. This was not a dream. This was real. This actually happened. I was there with my school, alongside my friends. We worked so hard for this reality, a reality we achieved. Yes, we were in London! I am thankful for every single moment of it. It has been four years since I lived there and things have changed. I remember four years ago I was running down the staircase of ICS, too happy to slow down and appreciate anything, and too happy to say goodbye. I was happy because it was the last day of school, we were out for the summer of 2015. This meant that my family and I were going back to Houston. As I bursted out those doors, I was unaware that I would not be returning that ...

Throughout this course, I found a common underlying characteristic of having to visualize and comprehend the gravity, importance and value of each site. Throughout this journey I was able to have these important aspects told and sometimes acted out, but within myself I found it still difficult to fully grasp and appreciate that almost two thousand years ago, the roman empire constructed that lighthouse I was standing in. This amazement and awe remained as I saw more and more places. While I saw the significance of the buildings or the figures that inhabited them such as Hampton Court Palace and King Henry VIII, it is still seemingly unbelievable that this man, who transformed the religious order in the country and the nation’s military strength, walked the same pathway and the same halls that I walked through. The constant presence of grand significance kept being outdone and became a normal experience to visualize the extraordinary people and events that occured in these places. The Q...

Having the opportunity to travel to London with the Post Oak School is one that I will never forget. Not only did learn a lot, but this trip has also changed the way I view history and traveling to a different city. This was also my first experience spending this much time in a completely different country with other people my age and my teachers. So, in addition to learning about landmarks and history in London, I learned social skills, responsibility, and the art of living with other people in a small space. I feel as though I have grown a lot from when the trip first started to now when it has ended. I now feel more confident in myself to be independent and I know I can take on responsibilities, this is all a result of the independence that was fostered in this trip and the responsibilities each one of us had to make this trip go smoothly. Before this trip became reality, there was a lot of work to be done, most of it done by Callista, Cassandra, and Morgann. They all did a grea...

I had no idea of what the trip to London was going to be like when I signed up for it. I mean, I knew it had something to do with learning about history, which already interested me, but I didn't know what the actual experience would be like. I ended up learning, not only about the history of London, but about many other topics. To me, the common thread in all the activities we did on the trip was politics. To be fair, politics tends to be the common thread in everything I'm passionate about, but I still think one could make a pretty good argument as to why it's true. We learned about ancient battles over the sovereignty of land, the significance of the Royal family in the past and present, the involvement of England in World War II, and the role of an institution like the British Parliament. Even the White Cliffs of Dover were used as a political instrument during the war, as we discovered in the documentary. After all of our experiences, I was forced to think about the ...

  Packed with educational trips to legendary and historical landmarks, the London A-term offered an incredible insight into the city and the UK as a whole. Over the course of ten days, I had an unforgettable opportunity to learn about a community other than my own, and through this experience numerous benefits to myself as a person. One of the most important benefits of this trip was education. Throughout the trip, we toured over 30 landmarks, including, cathedrals, castles, iconic buildings, parks, royal palaces and much more. Through our tours of the city, we had the opportunity to reflect on the similarities and differences between London and Houston. I thought about how dense the London area seemed compared to Houston, how elaborate the transportation network was, and how historical the city was in general. I learned about how the river Thames played a crucial role throughout history, how Stonehenge was built, and how the royal family had conquered, oppressed, and soon after b...

London A-Term Reflection Callista Wilson 30 March 2019 Traveling to London alongside my classmates and teachers from the Post Oak School has been a significant experience in terms of the development of both my knowledge and identity. Our adventures in London allowed me to better understand the deeper meanings behind many globally recognized landmarks. Also, spending time with the same group of people for ten consecutive days caused me to become more familiar and appreciative of each person’s characteristics. For instance, it was interesting to hear each person's perspective about the places we visited, and my experience of each site was made meaningful by not only my personal reactions, but also by the people I shared each moment with. On top of this, traveling to London for the first time since living there four years ago felt more sentimental than I could have ever anticipated. For this reason, the A-term provided me with a greater sense of closure regarding my previous ...

Today we started off with an around 8am breakfast prepared by Connor and George, and had site report for the London Mithraeum by Cassandra, before leaving for our train. We then walked to the train station and hopped on two trains that took us to our first activity of the day, the Thames River Cruise. During the cruise, the boat took us around multiple destinations that we had already visited our past 10 days in London. It first started off with the London Eye, and then some destinations like The London Bridge, The Shard, HMS Belfast, Tower Bridge and many more places that we had been to before. What added to the cruise was most definitely the commentary by one of the crew members of the ship, which made it more enjoyable and fun as he was cracking jokes as the cruise we were going along. After the cruise, we had an impromptu stop, because we were running ahead of schedule. We stopped by the Guildhall Art Gallery, which housed many paintings, drawings, sculptures, and artifacts. We...

After a wonderful breakfast, we started the day with a cruise on the Thames River. We saw a lot of the places that we visited throughout our trip on this one boat ride! Right in front of the London Eye! View of the "Walkie Talkie" building where we visited the Sky Garden  Morgann in front of the Tower of London!  After the cruise we took an unplanned trip to the Guildhall Art Gallery. We were all very happy we got the chance to go! Nathan and Callista reading about the Gladiators Observing artwork from the gallery Lunch Next, we walked to Honest Burgers and had delicious burgers!! After lunch, we walked to the London Mithraeum  - containing the remains of the hidden Temple of Mithras, a Roman temple built for the Roman god Mithras in the mid-third century. There are a lot of mysteries surrounding the religion because it was practiced in hiding and many of the meeting sites were underground. Display...

We started off the day early with a 7 am breakfast made by the wonderful Wilson sisters. After breakfast we hopped in the minivan ready for a near two hour drive to Stratford Upon Avon to explore Shakespeare's Birthplace. Most of us took advantage of the long drive to catch-up on some much needed sleep so we would be fueled for the exciting day ahead. Nearing the end of the drive, Connor and Angela gave very thorough and interesting site reports on Shakespeare's Birthplace and Shakespeare's New Place respectively. Our first stop, Shakespeare's Birthplace, was the starting point of our journey beginning with us making our way through an exhibition dedicated to Shakespeare. After learning a little about Shakespeare, we headed to the building where he was born. We got a quick history of the cottage and were free to walk around after. It was truly amazing to be able to walk through the room where such an influential person was born. To follow up with exploring the house, ...

Cassandra Wilson March 25, 2019 Blast from the Past Today was like one of those dreams where you go back through childhood memories and feel all the same emotions the way they were before. Even looking back on this day feels like recollecting distant memories from a dream, although this time it was different, this time it was real. It has been four years since Callista and I lived in London, and today we went back to many of the places we used to visit often. We started out our day walking by St. Mary's Hospital, and saw door where all the royal babies make their first entrance to the public. Then we took a nice stroll down Paddington Basin, a canal behind Paddington station where may canal boats dock. This whole area we walked around this morning felt very nostalgic, since we used to live near Paddington station and walked around the area often. After that, we walked from Paddington Basin to Hyde Park to take a walk trough the Italian Gardens before heading for lunch. On t...

Beautiful Gardens and Vibrant Sun! March 26, 2019 By Callista Wilson We started the day by driving from London to Stratford Upon Avon (the hometown of William Shakespeare); we first explored The Shakespeare Museum and Shakespeare's Birthplace. Cassandra and Morgann inside Shakespeare's childhood home. Outside, actors interacted with us, and preformed scenes from some of Shakespeare's plays including Hamlet, Macbeth, and Julius Caesar. Connor was included in one of the scenes from Hamlet. We walked by many historic buildings along the streets of Stratford Upon Avon. The gardens of Shakespeare's New Place (his home after becoming famous) were filled with brightly colored flowers and sculptures. One of the sculptures was a bronze cast of a tree. Before lunch, we explored Anne Hathaway's Cottage (the wife of Shakespeare). Morgann leads the way through a wooded path at Anne Hathaway's Cottage! Everyone enjoyed the amazing sunny d...

Our first visit was to St. Mary's Hospital, where a lot of members of the Royal family are born. It was a cold day, but we were able to get hot drinks thanks to Mr. Grisbee and Ms. Mayhew. We explored an area of the city called Little Venice, near Hyde Park. We saw swans and ducks at the Italian Gardens in Hyde Park. Group picture after our visit to the International Community School. by Angela