On Wednesday, we traveled on our final daytrip to St. Ives on the southern coast. Once our coaches arrived, they stopped in a coach park atop a hill which overlooked the coast and the city. The view was immediately breathtaking, and all of us headed down the hill towards the harbor side and the bright blue water. After walking past quaint old stone buildings on narrow streets, we reached the life boat station where a group of twelve of us had reserved a short boat cruise for later that afternoon. After checking on our reservation, we decided to check out the shops and restaurants along the harbor street. We were quickly drawn in by the smell of fresh fish and chips and decided to get “take away” and sit along the wall surrounding the beach. That morning was low tide, and the tides at St. Ives are extreme. During low tide, the wall we were sitting on is completely exposed and the beach extends several hundred feet. During high tide, though, the area we were picnicking at is completely submerged and used as a boat ramp. Scattered across the temporary beach were boats anchored to the sand. In just a few hours, these boats would be floating in the harbor during high tide.

After our lunch, we rounded up the twelve boat trip participants and went around the harbor to the wet dock where our boat would pick us up. The stone dock ran from steps leading up to the harbor street down into the water. It was currently exposed because of low tide, but later it would be completely invisible underneath the water. Families and kids fished for crabs and small fish off the side of the dock, and a group of kids showed off their day’s catch to us as we waited for our boat. A small motorboat came to take six of us at a time out to the Dolly P, our tour boat. Once we were all boarded, we began our trip out to the lighthouse island. The water was crystal clear and the weather was perfect for our trip. Once we reached the lighthouse island, the same lighthouse from the 1800s that Virginia Woolf used as an inspiration for one of her stories, we spotted several seals sun bathing on the rocks. Leaving the lighthouse, we sailed along the coasts and were able to take in all the beautiful beaches and cliffs.

Once we disembarked from our boat tour, we changed and went down to the quickly disappearing beach for some sun and sand. The water was too beautiful to leave without testing it out, and even though it proved to be FREEZING cold, we braved it for a swim to and from some of the rocks. On our way back, we were joined by one of the seals and got a close-up view before he swam away. We made it back to the beach just before it had completely been submerged and used the rest of the afternoon to walk along the harbor and watch the tide come in. Our last daytrip to St. Ives was more beautiful than any of us could have imagined and was a wonderful conclusion to all our travels across the southwest of England.

Thursday was our last day of lectures in the Summer School, and my pathway would be spending the day at the nearby St. Luke’s Campus. St. Luke’s is a small, historic satellite campus close to Exeter’s town center and is used for sports sciences. For our morning lecture, we had Dr. Garcia-Marco again and discussed the HELENA project he worked on. This study profiled physical activity levels and health effects on youth across Europe. The huge study has provided many insights into the effects increased activity levels have on youth and many more reports from segments of the study have yet to be published. Before our lecture came to a close, we had the opportunity to test out some of the objective measurement techniques used in the study like the bioelectrical impedance method for estimating BMI and the hand grip technique which has proven correlations to bone health and cardiovascular fitness. After running to a nearby Waitrose for lunch and eating in the St. Luke’s courtyard, we started our afternoon session in the exercise lab with Dr. Alan Barker where we conducted fitness tests to objectively compare accelerometer readings with energy expenditure. Two girls in our group volunteered to have their resting metabolic rates recorded and participate in a graded treadmill test to have their increased rates recorded. It was interesting to see how accelerometer data is matched with energy data to give a reading of physical activity. We were able to recognize the limits of accelerometers when an increased gradient on the treadmill resulted in higher energy expenditure, but the same accelerometer reading because speed was held constant. A hands-on exercise like this was a great experience for us to see how research data is collected, processed, and objectively analyzed to provide the best possible results.

Friday was our final full day in England, and to end our pathways, we spent our morning delivering oral presentations. Cindy and I had worked wonderfully together throughout our project and had really enjoyed being able to collaborate on our topic. Overall, all the groups in our pathway presented their projects well and each of us had a unique topic and perspective which related back to the pathway focus of physical activity and the environment. After presentations, I went into town for one last time. I took the time to walk along High Street, buy tea at Whittard’s, and eat a flapjack (the English granola bar) at the Cathedral Green before saying my final goodbyes to the city.

That night the entire summer school got ready for the Gala and took a group photo out on the Holland Hall Terrace. After plenty of photos, a lovely dinner, and student speeches that brought tears to our eyes, we danced the night away together. Sitting out on the terrace spending our last moments together as a group before people started heading back home was a bittersweet moment I will never forget.

The next morning at 7:00am, we got onto the coaches one last time to head back to Heathrow Airport and head home. I had nearly 24 hours of traveling ahead of me, but the hardest part by far was saying goodbye to everyone outside of Heathrow.

The Fulbright and International Summer School at Exeter was a once in a lifetime experience for which I will be forever grateful. I had the opportunity to travel to places I have only dreamed of visiting and meet people from across the world I would have never known otherwise. I am so sad that this whirlwind trip has come to a close, but between all the pictures and the friendships I have gained along the way, I know the memories really will “last a lifetime.”

Sunday, after our trip to Bath, we were given a free day. Although the forecast predicted consistent rain throughout the day, Veronica and I were adamant that our kayak reservations would not be in vain. With raincoats and a change of clothes in hand, we headed to the Quay to pick up our single kayaks. After asking for suggestions from the Saddles and Paddles staff, we decided to use our two hour reservation to paddle towards the Double Locks Pub (about 30-45 minutes). Once we were dockside and preparing to get into our kayaks, the true meaning of “wet boating” became clear to me. Both kayaks had a solid inch or so of water in them along with some interesting looking sea greenery. Veronica and I both shrugged and silently thanked ourselves for the forethought to bring a change of clothes before jumping in (actually I kind of slid in by sitting on the dock). Once we got going, the trip was absolutely beautiful! Paddling down the canal was so peaceful, and the surrounding scenery of green meadows with bike paths along the canal was wonderful. For me, it was odd to not have to look out for gators along the way, and the only creatures we came across were water gliders (besides the occasional fellow paddler). After passing by boats, houses, and green space and ducking underneath two bridges, we reached The Double Locks Pub. We literally flopped onto the deck from the kayaks, and then took the time to walk around the Pub grounds and drip-dry(this pub hosts lots of community events and has a huge tent and picnic area). Once the pub opened, we went inside to get two of the best cappuccinos I have ever had! I don’t know if it was our level of wet/coldness or the fact that the coffee really was fantastic, but once we finished, we felt ready to make the trip back.

Just as we had figured out how to slide into our kayaks again, the rain started. Some people may have been mad, but we were already completely wet from the boats and felt the rain just made the trip back more fun. Watching the drops hit the water ahead of us and hearing the sound of the rain on our coats just made the trip that much more enjoyable and, in our minds at least, more English.

After we got back to the Quay, we changed clothes and went to Waterfront Restaurant where we met up with more friends and ate a fabulous pizza. All in all, it was a relaxing day after the whirlwind of Bath and before classes started again for the week.

Monday, we had two lectures. Our first was given by our pathway coordinator, Prof. Williams, who discussed in depth the relationship between physical activity levels and health across the lifespan. That afternoon, we were taught by Dr. Winsley from the St. Luke’s Campus who helped us explore the debate of when and if children should be given the right to make decisions about their health, specifically how much physical activity they do. We split into two groups and constructed debates in support of or against a mandatory 60 min/day activity requirement for children. It was really helpful to use the resources from our morning and other previous lectures to construct our arguments and bring together what we have learned over the past several weeks. After lectures, I stayed for a short session on graduate study in the UK to find out more about the process of applying and being an international student.

Today in lecture we discussed the development of cardiovascular disease risk factors with Dr. Barker. It was scary to see the impact that having one major risk factor for cardiovascular disease has on your overall risk of a cardiac incident. Even more enlightening was the fact that the presence of some risk factors can be seen in kids. In fact, fatty streaks, precursors to atherosclerosis, have been seen in the blood vessels of kids as young as ten! And, the longer someone is under “risk,” the worst their chance of actually having medical problems later in life. This afternoon, the health advice continued with Dr. Garcia-Marco who lectured on the relationship between bone health and physical activity. According to him, fitness level may be a better indicator of health than activity level, even though the two are often closely related. Even increasing someone’s fitness to 25% of the optimal level has a HUGE impact on their health in the long term. After discussing the types of “impact” exercises which build up bone density, we were able to test our own bone density using a portable machine which ultrasounds your heel bone. The machine even prints out a “receipt” of your scan and density level compared to the normal US levels. It was interesting to be able to test one another and use the machine to follow up our lecture, and I am looking forward to our accelerometer experiments later this week.

Yesterday, most of the summer school students were given the day off to explore and study. I had most of the day free, except for a meeting to discuss the topic of my group presentation which will be part of the assessment for the summer school coursework. After reviewing our topic with Prof Craig Williams with my presentation partner Cindy from Shanghai, I met up with Cayla and Veronica to go into town. We started our day by finally finishing going through the exhibits at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum. (When we had visited before, we started at the top and never made it back down to the first floor!) Cayla had actually not seen any of the museum, so she enjoyed it in its entirety. I stayed on the ground level which housed an exhibition of historical and contemporary local art. It was fascinating to see the sketches of the City of Exeter as it looked over 100 years ago. Of course, the Cathedral was a prominent central feature to much of the artwork of the city from those times. One interesting painting, and quite a large one, depicted soldiers leaving for WWII. The images of the soldiers in uniform alongside the departing trains and their families was quite moving.

The ground floor of the museum also includes a historical record of Exeter from ancient times through the present. The fossils found in this area of England are astounding! It is hard to fathom the moors of Exeter as an ocean floor, or later, as the stomping grounds of woolly mammoths, but the fossil record is hard to argue with. Many artifacts from the period of Roman occupation in Britain were also on display. I really enjoy looking at the coins used during those times as well as the artisan artifacts of jewelry and metal-working. The craftsmanship of those ancient Romans rivals some of the best of today, and they truly did everything by hand! Later on in the museum, there are Victorian era displays of fashion and innovation– I for one am glad those dresses are no longer in style, too much fabric! The WWII era exhibit featured a reconstructed bomb shelter and video testimonies of the memories of people growing up here during the war and The Blitz. Exeter was bombed at several different locations, and it is hard to imagine what living in that type of fear would be like. One of the most interesting artifacts was a German Luftwaffe map of Exeter with places marked by Nazis for bombing. It is said that Hitler began targeting culturally and historically valuable sites in England as a retaliation of their bombing of a historic German church. Indeed, a bomb did hit near the southern end of the Cathedral and caused some damage, but nothing that was beyond repair.

After leaving the museum, we joined some other students for lunch at a local vegetarian restaurant, Herbies. Herbies has a completely vegetarian menu with lots of vegan and wheat free options as well. We all had a difficult time choosing just one thing off the menu, and I was very impressed with the variety of tasty options.

We spent the rest of the afternoon before dinner shopping around town. We also decided to stop at the local Bubble Tea shop. Their bubble teas were much different than the ones I was used to at home, but they were still good. I don’t think we succeeded in convincing Veronica that bubbles teas are the way to go though. They can take some getting used to.

After heading back to campus, we got ready for the day trip to Bath and began planning exactly how we could fit everything into a one day time limit…some strategic mapping was in order!

Today, we boarded coaches once again and traveled to the famous and ancient city of Bath. Our day in Bath began with the city’s namesake, the Roman Baths. The group I was in decided to tour the baths first before there were long lines. After getting into the complex, I was surprised at the sheer size of it. Roman baths were more than simple swimming pools, they included recreational areas, courtyards, and temples. This bath uses water heated  from one of Britain’s only natural hot springs and a sophisticated Roman plumbing system to disburse it throughout the different pools in the complex. The large central pool is quite stunning: bright green water surrounded by pillars and statues of famous Romans rulers and conquerors. Some of these were British additions after the baths were rediscovered. The original construction would have enclosed the baths with a large domed roof, but they have long since been open-air.

The provided audio tour guides gave interesting facts about the various pools and chambers of the Roman Bath. Many artifacts and ruins from the other buildings, temples, and altars on site have been preserved for viewing and models are on display showing what the entire area would have looked like in its day. Some of the interesting remains include the full skeleton of a Syrian man buried on the premise in Roman times, lead fragments with requests to the gods written on them that were left in temple areas, and pediment fragments from the temple facade featuring an enormous Gorgon medallion. The temple on site is believed to have been devoted to the god Minerva. Before leaving the baths, we tasted the spring water for ourselves at the “guest” fountain. It was a little iron-y, but overall palatable.

After the temple, we escaped getting bathed in the rain by touring the next door cathedral, Bath Abbey. It was built in much the same Gothic style as the Salisbury Cathedral and had beautifully ornate red chandeliers.

Once we left the temple, we walked down Gay Street to the Jane Austen Center. Two of Austen’s novels were set in Bath, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, and she herself lived in Bath for five years. Those were five tumultuous years, as her, her sister, and their mother went from middle-class gentry to poverty following the death of Rev. Austen. Their struggle ended when a brother allowed them to live on one of his properties, much like her own characters in Sense and Sensibility. The Jane Austen Center provided a in-depth history of the life of Jane Austen and the development of her writing. Although much of her personal life remains unknown, her stories have impacted literature and film for decades. The Center itself is housed in a building much like one farther down the street that Austen lived in for several months following her father’s death. Besides the exhibit, it contains a Regency Tea Room and costumes from contemporary Austen-inspired films.

After leaving our Austen fan-fare behind, we walked toward The Circus (and past Austen’s actual house). The Circus is a roundabout surrounding by identical arching buildings. From The Circus, you can exit the roundabout onto Royal Crescent which is a street where many famous British figures have lived over the years. We then walked towards the famous Pulteney Bridge which is one of only two shopping bridges in Europe and also the site for the famous “jumping” scene from the recent Les Miserables movie. Before reaching the bridge, we stopped for lunch at the Pig and Fiddle Pub (mainly to escape the rain, but also because of the name). The Pig and Fiddle did not disappoint, though, and I really enjoyed the pumpkin and goat cheese quiche special. Pulteney Bridge was a really beautiful area with terraced waterfalls in the river below and wooded parks along the banks. The Bath Market on the bridge was a cute indoor stall market with local vendors for food, jewelry, tea, and bath products. Before headed back to the coaches, we stopped to admire the Abbey Gardens alongside the river. After taking our pictures, the rain drove us quickly, albeit intermittently since we stopped to take refuge under overhangs, back to the coaches to head back to Exeter. Although quite wet, we were satisfied by our accomplishment of seeing every site on our list…good job team!

Wednesday morning, all the ISS students rose early to get on buses and make the 2-hour drive to The Eden Project. The Eden Project is an interesting site which combines ideas of sustainability and the importance of showing people the Earth’s biodiversity first-hand with the hope that education will spur positive action. The Eden site is made up of shops, restaurants, an outdoor amphitheater, beautiful outdoor gardens, two enormous Epcot-esque greenhouses (biomes), and The Core, an educational and exhibition building. The appearance of Eden is unlike anything I have ever seen. The dome-shaped biomes are a stark contrast to the green, natural surroundings and the sculpted gardens are astounding. It seems like a sort of plant-wonderland with lots of interactive activities for kids and families. We first entered the large amphitheater and took part in a participatory art display by making and pinning blue paper  butterflies onto a towering net filled with hundreds of other blue butterflies.

Our next stop was the Mediterranean Biome with plant life from Mediterranean climates across the world: olive trees from Greece, grapes from Italy, and aloes from South Africa were just some of the many plants within the huge dome. We then walked to the Rainforest Biome, the larger of the two, which features a 300+ feet high suspended platform that allows visitors to see the forest from a birds-eye vantage point. Hundreds of different plants filled the biome, many of which I recognized from my tropical climate back home. Full grown trees and waterfalls gave you the sense of entering an actual rainforest (so did the 100% humidity and 85F temperatures!). Before heading to the Core and gardens, we stopped for lunch in the family-style dining area which includes open kitchens and farmhouse tables. The food, some of which is grown on site, was amazing!

Once we finished our satisfying lunch, we walked to the Core which contains educational and artistic displays of the necessity of taking care of the natural world and reducing our impact. A huge trash monster outside of the Core is made of the amount of electronic waste the average human will create during their lifetime– a pretty startling graphic when piled together all at once. Inside the Core, is a large sculptural work called The Seed which was carved from a single piece of Cornish granite and resembles a pine cone. The Fibonacci sequence was used to generate the perfect circular patterns across its surface. The Seed represents life, both human, plant, and animal, and when the exhibition was opened the Queen placed a secret message beneath the behemoth sculpture to remain their as long as The Seed stands.

Before leaving the Eden Project, we wandered through some of the gardens, which recently received the prestigious Chelsea Award. They are certainly deserving of recognition and contain an array of beautiful flowering plants, trees and bushes. One of my favorite areas was the multi-color wild flower gardens. There really is something special about walking through a beautiful garden and just enjoying nature– that connection is something the creators of Eden hope to spread and protect for years to come.

After leaving Eden, my pathway traveled to the Tremough Campus in Falmouth-Cornwall for a one-nights stay before lectures the next morning. That night, the group of us took a bus into town and explored the beachside (and a seaside restaurant’s hot chocolate options). The next morning we discussed how natural environments can affect health and the science of epidemiology with Dr. Ben Wheeler and Dr. Nick Osborne. After our experience at Eden and the Falmouth coast, it was easy to discuss how different natural environments can de-stress and increase feelings of well-being. Exploring the physiological affects of these sensations and their ability to mediate other measures of disparity in society was of interest to all of us. Dr. Osborne was able to show us how those different studies could be done through epidemiology and the different hierarchy of study types.

That afternoon, we piled back onto buses to head back to Exeter for Karaoke Night. Karaoke is always entertaining and this night was no exception with many stellar performances in several languages! It was definitely a great opportunity to spend time with the ISS Class of 2013 and create fun memories for years to come.

Our second week of classes began with a quick weekly briefing of the week’s events before breaking off into our various pathways. My pathway spent both our morning and afternoon session with Prof. Hillsdon exploring te relationship between where people live and their physical activity levels. We spent time discussing what areas of their lives people get most of their physical activity in, where they get it, and how cities could support more physical activity. As it turns out, shopping is one of the largest single areas for physical activity for the average person in the UK (This probably comes as good news to those Black Friday shoppers back home!) Transport, especially to an from work and all those shopping trips, is the area with the most potential for improvement and could be a significant factor in the ability to raise people’s weekly physical activity.

After breaking for lunch, we returned to class and were given a chance to design an eco-friendly, activity supporting city. The assignment helped me realize the difficulty of combining metropolitan convenience with physical activity-supporting factors like walkability. The unique perspectives of our culturally diverse groups when designing our cities was also interesting: those with Western backgrounds immediately gravitated towards a grid-like design while others with European and Eastern backgrounds immediately considered the possibility of a wheel and spoke design.

Before breaking for the day, each of us was given a GPS unit and charger to track our movements until the next day’s lab on GIS. In order to get some interesting data, I spent the evening exploring more of Exeter with Cayla and we even got to stop by the local firestation and Victorian-era prison. Our wandering explorations made for an interesting lab session with Clive Sabel the following day as we were instructed in the basic methodologies and applications of GIS (Geographic Information Systems). We were all able to load our unique GPS data into the system and overlay it onto a map of Exeter to chart our whereabouts. It was both fun and interesting to track everyone’s night and look at the speeds and paths taken to and from campus. Besides examining our own data, we also manipulated childhood obesity and economic data for the Devon area through GIS mapping and simple statistics. By looking at different factors, we were able to find correlations among different variables, like the positive one I calculated between income deprivation and the density of the 0-4 year population of an area.

Exeter Sunset

After a day of GIS, I participated in a short film interview about the “summer school experience” before rushing to make our traditional Devon cream tea at the Exeter Cathedral. Thankfully, there was still hot tea with scones, clotted cream, and jam to go around. (Clotted cream is almost butter-like and spread atop scones with a fruity jam for the Devon cream tea experience. Obviously, it horrible for you, but just as equally delicious.) Veronica, Juliet, a student from France, and I then wandered around Exeter’s High Street shops before heading back to Holland Hall for dinner. We decided to make it an early night in preparation for our day trip to The Eden Project the next morning.

Exeter Fire Station

Fire Lantern (with little axes on the corners!)

Cream Tea!