The 2015-2016 school year started off with a four week trip around the United Kingdom. We started off in London, went up to Edinburgh and went back down to London, with short stays in Cumbria (at a research station), Liverpool and Oxford. This entire trip was basically what I imagined TGS to be like when reading about it prior to application.
Traveling around while doing place-based learning. Sounds great when you have the time and freedom to do so… However, as the final stretch of IB was approaching, the place-based learning quickly turned to studying and working for the IB in different places. Not that this is a bad thing, I am just saying that I became very familiar with the different coffee shops, hotel room desks and libraries around the UK. Yet I did not spend all of my time working like a hermit, no, we went out and explored the cities and placed and found did all the touristy stuff that you can possibly think of, like the London Eye, a musical in London, a boat tour on the river Thames, Tower Bridge, Big Ben, English tea in a park,
British Museum,  Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh Dungeon, Geography fieldwork in Kendall, Beatles Museum in Liverpool, Manchester United football match, touring the Oxford University Campus and heaps of other things that would make this list go on forever.In retrospect, however, the individual activities were obviously vastly interesting and incredible, but the variety of those activities gave me the impression of the UK that sticks to my mind until this day. It seemed to me that all the places, whether it was Scotland vs. England, London vs. Liverpool, University of Oxford vs. University College London, Liverpool vs. Manchester, all seemed to be at a steady rivalry and competition. For me, I would say that there no winner, I think that all the places combined give the UK this unique feeling. Additionally, as part of our Geography curriculum, we conducted a field study on the Urban structure of the settlement, Kendall. We investigated the placement of the different sectors (residential, industrial, commercial, etc.). Once having really understood it, I started seeing similar patterns in the other cities we visited. I was never so clear to me that cities are all structured in a particular pattern, touring the UK and seeing such a variety of urban settlements has really helped me to understand and visualize this concept and made me realize how similar they all are.

In conclusion, this small Island off the coast of the European mainland gains its distinctive element from a combination of all the different mentalities, architectural styles, accents, “cultures” and football clubs, is however similar at heart.