Hello Lincoln and Nottingham! (Kang Mengjie, China, ITP 2024)
Written by Kang Mengjie, Assistant Research Fellow, Foreign Collection Department, National Museum of China (China, ITP 2024)
I would like to share my interesting experiences at Lincoln and Nottingham. I had a very enjoyable week in Lincoln. This town is what I imagined England would be like, as this is my first time visiting the UK. After I arrived in London, I found that it was not quite the same as I imagined, maybe big cities are similar. Fortunately, I came to Lincoln, and the England in my dream is in front of me.
On the first day in Lincoln, we visited the Lincoln Cathedral which is a Gothic building built in the 11th century. Lincoln Cathedral stunned me, I really couldn’t find a suitable word to describe it, but can only keep my mouth open to appreciate it! This is the largest church I have ever seen, the towering dome, the exquisite stained glass windows, Lincoln Cathedral is nearly a thousand years old, lamenting how people built such a magnificent building at that time.
We also visited the 1000 year old Lincoln Castle. Standing at the top of the Lucy Tower, with a full view of the whole town, Baris said he wants to live here after retirement. Hahaha…! We also visited the Museum of Lincolnshire Life. It is an interesting place, which shows the lives of the people in Lincolnshire from the past. There are many scenes in the museum that bring people back to the past.
On August 4th, we went to Belton House which was taken over by the National Trust since 1984. Belton has often been described as the perfect English country house estate, and this place is also the shooting location of many famous films. There are so many beautiful rooms in it, and we chose our favorite ones.
Then it was time to travel to Nottingham. The University of Nottingham is a beautiful place, and the Orchards Hotel just inside the campus. As we walked along the lake, we met bunnies, little squirrels, ducks, a swan family.
Today, we visited the University of Nottingham Museum, which displays a lot of collections from Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Medieval times. Some of the collections were excavated on campus. Then we went to KMC (King’s Meadow Campus), School of Computer Science, where we all put on VR glasses to experience the scenes in the dinosaur era. That was too real, the dinosaur was really like in front of you, when it looked at you and came to you, I knew it was not real, but I was still so scared that I couldn’t help closing my eyes! It was such an amazing experience. I believe everyone has had a wonderful time at UK partner placement, and looking forward to hearing about everyone else’s visits.
