Hello from England! I’m Maryam, and I’m the program assistant on a brand new study abroad program where we’ll be spending the summer learning about World War II history, cryptography, the history of computing, and people like Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing. We’re about a week into the program and I’m looking forward to seeing where this summer takes us!
Monday and Tuesday were spent arriving and settling into Cambridge. We had a short orientation, all got to know each other a little bit, and then the students were off to move into their homestays where they will be for the next month. I’m sure some of them will be able to go into more detail about what that experience is like for them!
Wednesday was our first day of classes, and we all made it despite many different transportation related adventures. I decided to bike to class which required making an active effort to remember to stay on the left side of the road. In the morning we had an introduction to the classes by our program director, David, followed by our first history class taught by a local faculty member. Our classes in the afternoon were in a different building which resulted in a new set of navigational challenges, but also an opportunity to get to know Cambridge better.
On Thursday we had our first group outing to London where we got to start thinking about puzzles and code breaking by doing an escape room! My group had to escape from Blackwing’s cave (the lair of some supervillain who had trapped our superhero friend), and we managed to do so despite accidentally triggering an alarm that lost us 5 minutes and locking 3 of us outside the room in which part of the puzzle had to be solved (thanks Daniel for saving us!)
We have lots of exciting things planned for the summer, and you’ll soon be hearing from the students about how the program is going. Stay tuned!
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