Hello!
Finally I get to tell you about my last week of break! I did a lot of traveling over the last week. I went on an awesome road trip to Canada and then drove over to eastern Washington to visit some friends at Gonzaga University.
The road trip was to Canada will stay in my memory for a lifetime. I love mountains and being in the Seattle area means that I am surrounded on both sides with the Olympic mountain range and the Cascade range! We found out that there was a reservation for the Canadian First Peoples called the Boothroyd Band!! (Boothroyd is my last name) We decided that we had to go see it. The other motivation was my dad got a BMW M4 and he had read about a road north of Whistler where they compared the Jaguar F-type and the M4 and so he figured that was the best place to test out his new car. We only planned the trip the night before we left, but didn’t decide where we would sleep that night or even how many days we were going to go for. It was a very flexible trip to say the least. As I mentioned briefly at the end of my last post, the views were amazing. We drove north from Seattle, through the Boothroyd Band, spent the night in Lulworth, down into Whistler for brunch the next day, and ended by driving along the water to get to Vancouver where we got pasties and sausage rolls from the market on Grandville Island.
We decided to come back after Grandville Island which I was very thankful for. It gave me a day of rest before I drove four hours to the far eastern side of Washington to the city of Spokane. I have three friends that go to Gonzaga University and I have never been to visit before. My visit was long overdue. The first day we wandered through the city, saw a waterfall that runs straight through the city, toured the campus, and met a few friends of theirs. The second day I got to go to two classes of my friends! It made me laugh to say that it was my first day of American college 😉 I took notes and did my best to pay attention. The classes were in anatomy and microbiology which as a computing student is not exactly my forte.
I tried to compare the differences between the different types of teaching you get in America and England. The two classes I took in America were both an hour long. The teacher asked a lot of questions to the students to get them to recall information that they are supposed to know. The amount of content covered in class was limited to about 10-15 slides for the hour. It seemed that most of the learning was independent and the class time was to assure that the content had been learnt. In England, our classes are about 2 hours long and the time is spent really learning the material. We cover anywhere from 30-60 slides over the 2 hours. I personally prefer learning in class and supplementing my learning by reading in my free time. However it depends on your style of learning for what fits best. I would also like to point out that my comparison is flawed because the degrees are very different. It would have been better if I saw a computing class.
I finished my week off by doing coursework and having a very full day of all cultural events you could have. In one day I went to the museum for a Kehinde Wiley exhibit and saw a performance that showcased ballet, opera, and an orchestra! It was a pretty special day.
It was hard saying goodbye to my family this time. I really love Washington. As I am starting my placement over the summer, I will not be traveling home for another 8 months. That’s a long time to not see my cats 😉 I am getting to see my family a couple weeks after finals because they are all coming up to visit my grandparents in June and July. There are both perks and compromises that you have to make for studying abroad, but in the end it is an experience that is worth having.
Ta ta for now!
Holly
