Oak Lodge/London Adventure - Final Post - June 14 2014

We have all arrived home safely from London.  Our plane finally touched down in Pittsburgh at 9:30 pm on Saturday evening after leaving London at 8:00 am Pittsburgh time.

It was a great pleasure to work with everyone on this trip and all nine kids as well as staff members, Amy Dent and Nancy Possumato, were fantastic!

One of the homework assignments that I gave the kids was to identify some "Britishisms" which are not found here in the United States.  Here are some examples everyone gave me:

Oak Lodge School/Camden Locks Area - June 13, 2014

Today was a day of mixed emotions for us.  It was the last day of the trip but at the same time we were all looking forward to returning home to our families.   In the morning we all relaxed at the hotel and slept in as we had no concrete plans in the schedule.  We hopped on the train at 1:45 to go to Oak Lodge School to join in on a British tradition, the tea party.

After saying our good byes to our Oak Lodge friends, we headed to the Camden Locks area for a final flurry of souvenir shopping...

Oak Lodge/Harry Potter Experience - June 12, 2014

This morning we went to the Warner Brothers studio near Watford Junction.  We all awoke early and ran to catch the train to Watford Junction.  Once we had boarded the train, we ran into our Oak Lodge
friends who were riding the same scheduled train.  We continued on to Watford Junction where we caught the "311" Harry Potter Bus to the Harry Potter Studios.  Once inside, everyone was amazed by the detail and imagination of movie designers.  We were awed by the special effects and animatronics.

Buckbeak

Olivander's wand store

Madame Malkin's Shop

Fawkes

Artist's concept drawing of Dobby

Scale model of Hogwarts

After touring the Harry Potter studios, we returned to the hotel to change into more comfortable clothes and then headed to Oak Lodge School for a barbecue with the residential students.  Oak Lodge students and staff served us a wonderful meal of hamburgers, chicken, hot dogs paired with a wide variety of vegetable items including red cabbage slaw, mozzarella/tomato slices, cucumbers and salads.  After supper we played football and Hangman before departing back to the hotel for the evening.