After a six hour flight and a two hour bus ride from London we made it to our hotel and everyone immediately wanted to rest, myself included. However, we put our stuff away quickly and changed and went on a walk to Brindley Place which was only a short walk away from the hotel. Brindley Place consisted of many restaurants, the sea life museum and where three parts of the canal meet. In order to stay awake for the rest of the day I grabbed some coffee from Costa Coffee which is a popular British coffee chain. Next we got some traditional fish and chips at a canal front restaurant which had an amazing view. The meal at The Malt House was very good but what surprised me was the portion or size of the meal. I was expecting a large piece of fish but I felt like I was given the whole fish. After taking a nap at the hotel some of the group went and found a burger joint in a park nearby. I guess it was pretty obvious that we were from Birmingham because the cashier immediately asked where we were from. We eventually somewhat befriended the workers at the burger place and found out that one of them had studied in Kansas. My favorite memory from getting burgers was when one of the workers was telling us about his passion for tornados and I quote said  “The two reasons I want to go to America are one, guns, and two, tornados”. It was interesting to see that that was his perception of what is cool in America.  I am surprised at how easy it is for people to pinpoint where we are from without even hearing us speak. Within the past 48 hours many people have asked my peers or myself where we were from and each time they asked we would answer with “U.S.” and they would proceed to always ask “No, yes I know that but I mean which state?” or something along those lines. 

Waking up the next day was difficult but I was eventually filled with excitement when we reached the campus of Birmingham City University (BCU). We started our day off with introductions and meeting our new professors at BCU. We got a very in depth presentation about the history of BCU and it’s many faculties. It was very interesting to see how the university was set up and how which courses fall into which school. We also saw a graphic of some of the demographic breakdown of the student population, the statistic that interested me the most was the percent for mature students at the university. I learned that a mature student is the equivalent of what we consider to be a non-traditional student, the difference is that you are considered a mature student when you start university past the age of 21 and at Pitt you are considered a non-traditional student once you start university past the age of 24. One of our professors from BCU herself was a mature student. Vina told us about her experience of being a mature student, she worked during the day and would go to class at night. While completing her studies she had two daughters of her own and managed to graduate. Vina’s career path also was interesting since she began her career working in the private health sector and did a 180 and switched to working in the public health sector. Her insight into the both sectors of healthcare in the UK was very interesting and I look forward to learning more about the difference between them. One reason this trip interests me so much is because the UK has free public healthcare and the U.S. does not, and I really want to get a greater understanding of what free public healthcare really looks like and how it works and how it compares to privatized healthcare systems.

The rest of our class time we mainly discussed certain aspects of the education system in the UK, specifically the educational routes to university in the UK. Unlike in the U.S. where you need your high school diploma or a GED to get into university in the UK there are levels at which you can enter university. For example, if you apply to university after having completed your A-levels you are considered level 3, if you did not complete your A-levels or take any and you finished with GCSE’s you are considered level 2 or 1, however you can still be admitted to a school. Two of our professors Claire and David C. both had personal experiences with not taking the traditional route to university. David himself did not take the traditional route in the UK which is A-levels then university. Claire’s son completed his GCSEs and then went to the equivalent of tech or trade school and got a certificate to be an animal tech, and he is now thinking of going to university to pursue nursing. What I took away from this day in class was that compared to the U.S. the UK does not have a binary system into being admitted to a university and pursuing higher education.