Despite cold, rainy weather, I enjoyed exploring Birmingham City University (BCU) campuses. At the City Centre campus, the lion mascot stood out on the red glass panels. The area’s architecture is more modern than that of other Birmingham sites. Our first stop was the education, business, and law building, featuring white walls and glass that allowed abundant natural light. The space reminded me of the science-focused Life Science building at Pitt-Greensburg. Our building there is also mostly glass and modern, while the rest of the campus is older similar to BCU and the city. We met Chinenye Anetekhai, who is responsible for the International Nursing committee for BCU and her Burns and Wound charity. She gave us a grand tour and her life story about how she became a nurse; even though, her heart was set on becoming a pilot. My classmates and I each introduced ourselves and told her our major and what specialty we wanted to do once we graduated. She has such a way with words when she speaks that I hung on to every one of them I love how passionate she is about every topic we went over.

Once we left the first building, we took a brief look around of the arts and engineering buildings. In my opinion, the engineering building was the coolest. They had a “think tank” that had an interactive area that is for students to generate creativity. The landscape looked like a steampunk’s dream interactive space. It had huge cogs that looked like they could move. Unfortunately, we were unable to explore it because it was currently booked for students. Then we took another walk up a hill that tried to take me out. My calves are still sore from yesterday, so it was a bit of a struggle to get up there. We were just in time to take the double decker bus to the South BCU campus. It was a long ride that allowed us to see parts of the city we did not see on our walk yesterday. It was mostly under construction but was quite beautiful. Once we arrived, we got a feel of the layout and had lunch there. I was shocked at how inexpensive my lunch was. I had the Katsu Chicken Curry with basmati rice and a spring roll that was absolutely divine with an orange Fanta for £6 which is $7.07. If I bought that back home in the States, it would have been $20. There is a reason why the food is so cheap. The Chancellor at BCU noticed that majority of the students are from working class families and wanted to make their life easier by providing food at a lower cost. It reminds me of the free or reduced lunch that I would get as a child. Breakfast and lunch were given for free or a reduced price for children that came from low-income households. It helped make sure that children were able to receive hot meals twice a day, if that was their only meal.

After lunch, Chinenye educated us about how burns are caused and how they treat them in the hospitals here in Birmingham. She said something that really resonated with me, “burns are the disease the poor.” Which is true because if you think about, affluent people do not cook for themselves or make their own tea. They have people employed to do that or machines that do it for themselves. Poor people boil water on the stove to make food and tea because they cannot afford the same luxuries as the wealthy. It also affects women more than men due to gender roles. Women are more likely to cook, clean, and take care of the children. They are so exhausted that they may have stepped away from the stove for a few minutes or needed to answer the door. In those few minutes, is ample amount of time for a child to pull on a pot of hot water or a cup of tea. Burns are chronic disability that does not go away. Chinenye talked about a patient that had extensive burns, where her care would have cost well over €200,000 in the United States. She also talked about how they wrap burns to keep mobility in limbs and to prevent ears from adhering to the sides of the head. The most interesting wrapping to me is the fingers. Each finger has to be wrapped individually and the hands need to resemble the patient holding a burger. It allows the patient to be able to move their fingers in the future; otherwise, the fingers would adhere all together. This lesson not only went over things I knew about burns, but taught a lot about things we have not learned about in classes yet. I look forward to learning more in the upcoming days ahead.