Arcadia England

We like to encourage students to come and visit us here at the London Center. One way we do this is to offer every direct enroll student, that is studying outside of London, two free nights in a London hostel. Ferdinand Harerimena, took full advantage of this offer. Visiting from Manchester, Ferdinand made the most of his stay, as he has done the whole semester. We are very pleased that he found the time to write a great review of the two of London's greatest attractions, the Science and Natural History museums.

When I came at the London Center, Andrew and Kimberly recommended visiting the Science Museum and Natural History Museum, both located in South Kensington. I first visited the Science Museum. I was really amazed by how many people were on the line before the museum opened! The museum opens at 10 am. When I joined the line (around 9:30am), there seemed to be around 400 visitors lining up to go inside. I personally thought that there had to be something extraordinary about this place and it turned out that I was not wrong! In the afternoon, I visited the Natural History Museum and the number of visitors seemed to be double of what I had seen at the Science Museum. People lined up and the line was twisted many times to incorporate many people.

So what was remarkable about the museums?

The Science Museum has the Planet science exhibition which displays the changing pattern of the atmosphere. The exhibition is a floating sphere (the Earth) and displays satellite motion images of ocean water currents, how most of the world electric energy is consumed by cities nearby seasides , how the Earth’s vegetation changes over the seasons, and the daily flow of airplanes in the atmosphere! Many people took seats and others were standing to watch the documentary of climate change. It was fascinating to see the airplanes’ traffics and a great number of planes that are flying in each second! The whole point was to show people how many planes in the atmosphere contribute to the increase of greenhouse effect (due to the emission of Carbonic dioxide). I also saw many people―most of them gathered families― at the Who I am? Galleries, which allows people to explore what makes them, them. The interactive galleries help visitors to answer some questions about human’s life, like “Are you acting at your age?” Interactive screen also allow people to share their thoughts about some questions raised by the future of science, like “would you want a holiday in space that cost £50,000?”(To which one person replied yes if the trip was £200!). They allow children to make a difference between a smiling face from a sad one for example. In addition, visitors can pay to experience airplane flight, watch IMAX movies about astronaut missions (Apollo), and get their pictures taken as astronauts or Air Force. I observed similar things at the history museums where many visitors wanted to step on the earthquake simulator to experience earthquake motions. At the end of my visit, I was fascinated by how influential scientific museums are to people’s social lives. When I left the Science Museum, I asked how many visitors the place receives on average, and the person at the reception said that she could not find the statistics but that they once have recorded 3000 people a day, a figure that can go higher during holidays. Visiting the two museums was an incredible experience and I would recommend it to other study abroad students. Many thanks to Andrew and Kimberly for recommending the places! Also, whilst in the UK Ferdinand visited Old Trafford the home of English football giants Manchester United. He was luckily enough to get some snaps with the players. United could have done with some of Ferdinand's luck this season.