So this week I embarked on a new adventure with 2 other teachers: taking 26 seventh and eighth graders on a week long trip to London, England. Our trip was planned with a performance arts emphasis. When I was told that I was going to London, I didn’t realize that as teachers, we would be an active participant in what became a Shakespeare worthy comedy of errors! I mean, we expected to deal with the typical things like colds, homesickness, some group issues etc, but my goodness, we all got more than we bargained for.

Prelude

Even before we left, we were having issues with our schedule, particularly mealtimes. The tour company has obviously never spent time with a hungry teenager (or a hungry adult, for that matter!), as they were planning to feed us dinner at 11pm, but still expected us to be up by 7am… Even I wasn’t willing to do that! We also didn’t have a finalized itinerary until about 12 hours before flying out (which we ended up changing once we were on the ground…)

ACT I- Arrival

At the airport, check-in took a while, as all the students were under the same booking and we had to bring them up one at a time. We also had one student whose name was spelled incorrectly on one document. Otherwise, we all made it to the gate fine and we even had some time to get food.

Everything was good until we were boarding the plane. We handed out passports so that everyone could go through the gate. Just moments after getting onto the plane, one of our students stopped suddenly and started frantically searching her bag. She couldn’t find her passport! S***! As she had already boarded the aircraft, she couldn’t get off. And everyone else in our group was already on board… Thankfully, one of the security guards found her passport in the waiting lounge and was able to bring it to us. Phew! Possible turn around in London avoided!

The flight itself was fine, everyone complimented our students on how well behaved they were, and gave us candy to hand out. After getting our bags, we got everyone sorted with their winter gear and found our coach. There was about 1-2cm of pretty grey snow, which had the students super excited and trying to touch it (it was basically road snow. Yuck!). We went straight to Westfield shopping centre for about 45 minutes of power shopping. This is when our next event happened. All but 4 students returned on time. And then we waited… for those familiar with Westfield (Shepherds Bush location), it is quite large. It could be very difficult to find them. It took 20 minutes, but our lead chaperone finally chased them down and we managed to get to our hotel.

Act II- Food

Our dinner was served in the hotel. Keeping in mind that it was already 9pm local time and that our last meal had been on the plane, we were looking forward to a decent meal. Were we ever disappointed! First off, we were told that we would have a veg or meat option, but there was no choice. Only vegetarian and no consideration of dietary restrictions (I have recently discovered that dairy and I are not friends, and that gluten also upsets my digestive system a lot. One of the other chaperones is vegan, and we had 4 vegetarians and about 5 students who need Halal meat). Our lovely vegetarian meal was spring rolls with bread followed by a goulash of veggies with a baked potato. It was unappetizing to look at AND not satiating in the least. By this time, (it is now the equivalent of 1am for our bodies), many students just gave up and didn’t eat. The hotel finally conceded and allowed us to get some meat from the buffet, although none of their meat was halal… I ate from the buffet and finished my meal and was STILL hungry. When we asked at reception what was included in our breakfast, the response was “Honestly, not much. Maybe some bread and jam, or cereal.” And only cows milk. I expected something like this, and actually brought my own cereal with me. This is the breakfast that was supposed to keep our kids full from 8am to 2 pm. Ya right! Thankfully, our rep on the ground, who is actually a consultant for the company, organized and fronted the upgrade to the full English breakfast.

We communicated our dissatisfaction but were told that we were still eating at the hotel as it was prepaid. (Our original schedule had us eating at the hotel every night, “because it is difficult to find halal restaurants” in London. BS. We had managed to get them to change it to 4 nights at restaurants, but after our first meal, it was clear that there was no way we would eat there again, unless we wanted to deal with a mutiny from our students (and their parents). On our second day, myself and another chaperone spent much of the day searching for Halal ready restaurants that could hold 30 people. Not an easy task for a Saturday night… By 4:30-5pm, we were still searching for a place (the company wasn’t able/didn’t try to find a suitable alternative). We ended walking up to the Pizza Express at Euston Station. They were fantastic, and for 10£/person, we had a starter, individual pizza and drink. The crappy hotel food was apparently 17£/person, so really, we were saving them money! The manager at Pizza Express was also excellent and very accommodating. They sat us down and started taking orders within 5 minutes, and even though the restaurant was full, they brought our food out quickly. I was even able to have a vegan gf pizza!

Our consultant, Michael, found us a few other places, including Garfunkel’s and Planet Hollywood, who are well set up for groups. The restaurant that the company had organized (from Dubai) was a tiny Italian eatery, which had excellent food, but had not been warned that we were coming, nor that we would fill up virtually the entire restaurant. It took almost 3 hours to finish dinner, and we were unimpressed by the way other patrons (who arrived after us) were cared for and served while we were left watching.

Act III- The Umbrella Room workshops

We met Jonathan at the hotel and walked over to the studios in the slush. Only a couple students slipped! This is one area of the trip that we didn’t have to worry about! Jonathan and Josh, the instructors were great with the kids. Our workshops included Body Percussion, flash mob, red nose, stage combat and theatre make up. Even our frigid walking tour around central London to scout out locations for the flash mob kept the kids entertained! I got to participate/demonstrate the hair pull in stage combat and I personally would have loved to have done the theatrical makeup!

Act IV- The Shows

Our first show was a matinee production of Thriller Live. Originally, we were supposed to see Stomp, but they weren’t in London anymore. We were also supposed to see Wicked, but that didn’t happen either. The music for thriller was good (obviously, it was Michael Jackson), but we thought it would be more of the story of his life. There really wasn’t a plot, just working through different periods of music. The theatre itself was also very cramped and we were “restricted view”.

Our second show was Aladdin. This one was the students favourite. Everyone’s favourite was the genie, who tied a lot of pop culture references, including Black Panther, into the show. The sets and costumes were fantastic, although I didn’t care for Jasmine’s voice. It was hard to hear, and quite nasally. It also didn’t blend well with the rest of the cast. That aside, I had a great time.

Our last show was on our last full night in London. We went to see the Lion King. This was my favourite, but I have always enjoyed Lion King! For me, the music, costumes and sets were fantastic, especially the stampede scene. The kids didn’t enjoy it as much, as they had had a very long day and were tired. Also, some are a bit racist and had an issue with the mostly black cast. The sets were also not as diverse as Aladdin. Did I mention that we almost didn’t make it to the show? And that we ended up walking past a TON of bars with a bunch of 13/14 year olds… Google Maps doesn’t tell you everything! Oops!

Act V- London City Tour, Harry Potter and the Globe Theatre

Continuing on with the miscommunication theme, we started out day 6 with a city tour, only our guide didn’t show up as he hadn’t been informed of the new schedule! I ended up looking up info on Westminster and the Parliament, and then our guide took over. It was raining, and the night before had been a late one, so our students were tired. Although the guide was informative (he used to work at the BBC), he droned on about a lot more history than most of us cared for. We saw the side of Buckingham palace (but not the front), and the royal cavalry on our way to the Victoria and Albert museum. As always, I love this museum, and I was surprised by how much our students did as well. I was not expecting them to be into museums. After lunch (which we were late to) we headed out to the Warner Bros Harry Potter Studio, which we were also late for… Have you noticed a pattern of being late? It continues. Mostly, when the coach bus was involved. Surprise surprise, London traffic was not factored into the schedule…

The kids loved Harry Potter, but we ended up rushing through, having only half the recommended time to visit. And again, even though we had told them not to wander off, I had to fetch 3 of them… (2 repeat offenders, who apparently didn’t learn their lesson when they had to wake up early and accompany us chaperones on wake up duty!) (Yes, as chaperones, we were sleep deprived, as it was last to bed, and first up. And this didn’t include the middle of the night wake ups the other 2 chaperones received due to illness and homesickness. I will add more in the next “act”). We did have enough time for them to try the sickeningly sweet Butter beer.

On our very last day (International Women’s Day), we had a tour with Millie, around Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Millie was so enthusiastic that even our tired and cold students were engaged in the tour. (Yes, it was cold and windy beside the Thames).

Our bus driver was also a woman, who took us way out near the airport to the SKY News Academy. This was actually really cool, where the students got to plan their own news broadcast and film in front of the green screen. The result was really neat, having all 4 studios culminating in a final news broadcast. The only issue, is that it was way out near Heathrow, and we still had to come all the way back for lunch, before heading towards the airport again that evening… This was also one of the colder days, as we did the last of our sightseeing (Tower Bridge, Tower of London (from the outside) and Buckingham Palace).

Act VI- The Sickness

What would a trip be without medical issues? Thankfully, our trio was a very complimentary group, dealing with different issues. Liv, our “First Aid” teacher, had her hands full dealing with vomit, diarrhea, fevers and sore throats (on top of the regular meds and allergies to be handed out). Mike had to deal with several very homesick students. I was fortunate that I was not woken up several times a night (like the other 2). I just ended up with some of the grade 7 friend drama. I am grateful for some of my mom’s tricks, using the “You are going to sit here until you can think of 3 nice things to say to each other”. It took almost an hour to sort out the 2 girls (who of course, were sharing a room, and “Couldn’t possibly sleep in the same room as her!”). We sorted it out, and then 24 hours later, they were best friends again. Go figure!

If that wasn’t enough, Mike also had to make 2 trips to the emergency room, missing Harry Potter World, The Lion King, and some of our workshops. The first, was a student who was burned by hot coffee that another hotel guest spilled on him at breakfast. Second degree burns. Luckily, that student is a trooper, and once he was released, joined in on all the activities again as if nothing had happened. The other student ended up with a fever pushing 40 celsius…

Finale

Thankfully, we made it back to Dubai without any major issues (only 1 student at the airport where they had misspelled his name) which held him up a bit. We had just enough time to send the kids to buy food (15 minutes) before boarding the plane. Unfortunately, this is when they decided to disobey the Rule of 4 (they must stay as a group of 4, so that if anything happens, they will never be left alone). We made it safely through London, and let them loose on Oxford Street at rush hour (5-7pm) without any issues, but this one last test is when they failed… At least they can’t get too far in the airport, right! From there, we hopped on the plane, and landed on time back home. Our trio of teachers (and all the students) survived!!

Epilogue

This was the trip that just kept giving. After we returned to school, most other trips just had some minor wrap-up stuff to do. We ended up with a crazy parent meeting (to the point that we are never to meet with that parent again without an administrator present), debrief and feedback sessions with the company, the contractor and our administrator to once again voice how disappointed we were with the service, and then another parent, who over a month after the trip was done, was upset that her daughter had to spend the last night in the hotel room by herself, as the other student had to leave and was picked up by her mother.

On a positive note though, most of the parents were very grateful for our work, and threw us a dinner to relive the memories (through the photos) and to show their appreciation of the experience their children got. I also made 2 new friends, and we will forever be bonded by our London Chaperone Juice and Coffee sessions!