New York

At 4:00 am on 17th February, 20 sixth form students departed APS and headed off to the Big Apple. They spent 7 days experiencing all the seasons in one week, from mild spring afternoons to 2 feet of snow and temperatures of -9 degrees Celsius, whilst enjoying a wide range of amazing activities.

Our trip included sampling an all you can eat brunch at the Red Rooster in Harlem with an hours entertainment from a gospel choir, who have appeared on Americas Got talent and the Jimmy Fallon show. Seeing works of art at MoMa and engaging in activates at the Museum of Mathematics, watching the NHL at Maddison Square Garden, a boat trip around Hudson Bay and Manhatten Island, nighttime ice skating in Central Park, a Broadway play, visiting 'The Edge' amongst other sightseeing and eating opportunities and boy did they enjoy the food! Breakfast at the diner was a daily adventure, with the plates getting fully and fully as the week went on.

The purpose of the trip was STEM and so the students also visited two universities, CCNY in Harlem, and Stony Brook on Long Island. Both are public universities but completely different. CCNY is where Einstein gave his first lecture on relativity in the USA in 1921. Stony Brook is a residential campus with 25,000 students. It is massive! The students attended a seminar on how nanomaterials are being used to address ph levels in organs and repair damage to the liver and brains of mice. They then got the opportunity to visit the labs and see how all the areas of STEM were being used to examine brain activity in mice. They were privileged to see the cutting edge of research that hopefully will benefit us all in the future.

After Just 7 days later on what had seemed like a nonstop adventure, we returned exhausted. The students had a trip of lifetime lots of great memories and experiences that they will never forget. It was a pleasure to take them and both myself and Ms Bent thoroughly enjoyed their company and were so impressed with how they all looked out for each other.

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