Week 1: Hello Mates!

I hope you are all enjoying being back surrounded by your friends at college and gearing up for another semester of your own. My semester certainly has brought on many adventures already, more than usual perhaps since I am spending it here in London as a part of the TWC – London internship program. I am originally from Lebanon, Pennsylvania and am a junior at ‘The Vern’ (i.e. Alvernia College) in Reading, PA. Though it’s easy to think London embodies a very western culture and is not very different from the US, (except for their funny accents, of course) I am continually and pleasantly surprised about life here on the other side of the pond. At every turn, at every sound, at every sight, I am learning something entirely new about this foreign country and about myself or of course, my travel mates. There is never a dull moment. So, as I and my fellow roommates take time to discover both the brilliant and ordinary aspects of this curious culture, we’ll share with you through stories, pictures, letting you in on all the surprises and fun. We do hope that you’ll check back often to see where the pavement (sidewalk) or tube (metro) takes us along the way.

Already, the stories are mounting (No, really it doesn’t take long!). On Wednesday, around noon I had my interview with the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, CBCD, which is my internship site. I knew my interview was going to be given by a tri-lingual post-doctorate research fellow who completed her Ph.D in Cognitive Sciences from the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris and is a native Romanian. So, yes I was slightly nervous. However, getting to my interview proved far more time consuming and stressful. Thank goodness I remembered the words of my mother to always plan for error! I left 2 hours before my interview which was three, yes, three stops away from my flat and arrived with 1 minute to spare. *phew! Looking back I can laugh, but while stumbling around Russell Square, an area reminding me of Penn State’s main campus squeezed on about a 1/8 of the land, I was not humored. Therefore, I quickly realized one stark contrast between the US and London is space. The whole city is just continually bustling. However, when you feel frazzled and frantic, all you must do is retreat to the kitchen, make a cup of tea and enjoy a biscuit, or two. Your worries will melt like away with the warmth of your tea and you will once again be ready to conquer the curiously close, and at times confounding yet, captivating and copacetic city of London!

So, this is a picture of my internship site, at least from the outside. It is a wonderful facility built only a few years ago and filled with cutting edge research technology. In just two days I have had the opportunity to help with two research projects, one about language acquisition and attention and the other about emotional processing in infants, attend two seminars, one about using imagination to understand the neural basis of episodic memory and the other on audiovisual processing in infants as well as learn how to code information from an infant eye tracking video which was recorded during an experiment. This coded information allows the researcher to then analyze and utilize the date. Needless to say, I am thoroughly enjoying being in such a stimulating environment, learning powerful information and working with experts in the field of developmental cognitive psychology everyday! It’s truly like living my dream. Well, cheers everyone, and check back soon for more travel adventures . . . I hear Paris calling, pouvez-vous?

-Sarah