Class, Chapel, and Shopping

Compared to all of our adventures yesterday, today was a pretty uneventful day. Our morning class was a lecture about early intervention and prevention of speech and language disorders in very young children. Right after lecture and before lunch, Dr. Cooke took us over to Great Ormand Street Hospital to see the Chapel of St. Christopher that is in the building. The hospital is for children, so the chapel had small pews and a “Teddy Bear Choir” which was a whole bunch of stuffed animals that lined a ledge that ran around the walls of the chapel. The animals had been placed there by the families and friends of sick children. It was really neat to see the chapel, but at the same time it was very sad to hear about the accidents that put children into the hospital and to read cards to deceased children that were written by their heartbroken families. It was definitely a heart-wrenching place.
After we went to the chapel, we headed back to UCL to eat lunch and then we had presenters come in to our classroom for the evening. The first presenter was a SLT who worked for Connect, a charity that focuses on providing support and aid to people who suffer from aphasia and other acquired communication disabilities such as dementia. The second presenter was a man who had suffered from a stroke at age 35 and had temporarily lost his speech afterwards. He shared his story with us and told us of how he had overcome the obstacle in his life and turned it around when he decided to become a counselor after his recovery. It was a very inspiring and moving story. With the end of his discussion around 4:00, we were finally done with our classes here in London!
We then headed over to Regent’s College to print off our boarding passes for our flight to Paris tomorrow morning, and we ate dinner there too. Most of us finally used the last of our 100-pound credit for the Regent’s College cafeteria. I guess that means there will be no more free food for me while I’m here ☹.
When dinner was over, we headed to Oxford Street to do a little bit of quick souvenir shopping, for Brittany to top off on her cell phone, and for Sarah to return a dress to TopShop (a slightly expensive, popular, and incredibly busy young adult clothing and accessory store). After we were done with our shopping, we came back to the flat to start packing and getting ready for our couple of days in Paris.