May 21, 2015, by International students

You’ll never run alone: the School of Education trip to Liverpool

In March I went on a trip to Liverpool, which was organized by the School of Education as a part of its student social event programs. There have been several trips like this each term. These trips are the opportunities for students to immerse themselves with English culture, and more importantly to escape from the MA life and assignments by hanging out with friends! What makes it even better is that the trips are totally free. There are limited numbers of seats for each trip, therefore, we should pay attention to our University emails if we want to join as the seats are always quickly filled up.

Puput (right) with TESOL classmates at Albert Dock

For this Liverpool trip, I was so excited that I could go with my awesome classmates: Alia, Heng, Melody, Meng Pei, and Chacko. We reached the city at around 11 o’clock and the coach dropped us at Albert Dock. We had around 7 hours to explore the city before the bus leaving at 6pm. Albert Dock was a perfect place to drop us as there were some museums near by. Realizing we would not have much time to visit many places, we picked only 2 places to visit. Our common preference was the Merseyside Maritime Museum that was only 5 minutes away. So, we headed to the museum that showcased the collection that reflected Liverpool’s significance and its roles in slave trade, emigration and wars. This museum also showcased the history of the famous Titanic that left Liverpool before sinking in its way to New York. This was a perfect place as there was another museum, the International Slavery Museum that was just upstairs as well.

After lingering around for about 2.5 hours in the museum, we decided to head out to our second destination which varied from each other. Melody, Meng Pei and Chacko preferred visiting the Beatles Museum,  Heng went to Liverpool Cathedral, while Alia and I decided to visit the home of Liverpool FC, Anfield.

I was super excited to visit the stadium because I was an avid fan of the football club when I was in upper secondary school. In fact, Liverpool was the first place outside of Indonesia, my home country, which I had dreamt of visiting. Alia was also excited as well, as she had never visited the stadium yet. It was 3:40 when we reached the stadium. Too bad, we just then found out that the last tour had started at 3:30! We were not allowed to join the tour, until Alia tried to talk our way in, saying I was from Indonesia and had been an avid fan of the club. Thank God, the receptionist lady kindly allowed us to join the last trip! We ventured around the stadium and I took as many pictures as possible. It was a real dream come true for me!

At Anfield Stadium

By 5 pm we were finished with the trip, and we met the other girls at 5:15 to have dinner. We had been so starving that we spent 45 minutes enjoying ourselves and chatting, until we realized that it was 6 pm. and Lucy, our kind school trip organizer had been contacting us! No other choices, with full stomach we ran along the way like in action movies to catch the bus! Thank God, we made it in time. Well, this trip to Liverpool has been teaching me that being in the UK, with these awesome classmates, both literally and figuratively, in terms of catching the bus as well as catching up with the assignments, it has been not only a walk, but more of a rushing (as well as an exciting) run. What’s better is that, with these awesome classmates, literally and figuratively, I’ve been fortunate enough to never run alone!

Puput Arfiandhani, an international student from Indonesia studying MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) at The University of Nottingham.

This post is also available in: Indonesian

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share on Google+
• Share on LinkedIn