As a tourist, you are always a foreigner. Sure, hostel-hopping and sightseeing can be great fun, but connecting with a foreign country through studying, volunteering, or working can extend your travels beyond tourist traps. We don’t like to brag, but this is what’s different about a Let’s Go traveler. Instead of feeling like a stranger in a strange land, you can understand the United Kingdom like a local. Instead of being that tourist asking for directions, you can be the one who gives them (and correctly!). All the while, you get the satisfaction of leaving Britain in better shape than you found it (after all, it’s being nice enough to let you stay here). It’s not wishful thinking—it’s Beyond Tourism.
As a volunteer in Britain, you can unleash your inner superhero with projects from saving seal pups in Cornwall to fighting poverty in London. This chapter is chock-full of ideas to get involved, whether you’re looking to pitch in for a day or run away from home for a whole new life in British activism.
The powers of studying abroad are beyond comprehension: it actually makes you feel sorry for those poor tourists who don’t get to do any homework while they’re here. You can study everything from folklore to physics at some of the oldest universities in the English-speaking world: Cambridge, Oxford, and St. Andrews. British universities are also known for their strength in area studies like African Studies or Asian Studies. If economics is your cup of tea, spend a summer or a year studying accounting, finance, or management at the famed London School of Economics.
Working abroad immerses you in a new culture and can bring some of the most meaningful relationships and experiences of your life. Yes, we know you’re on vacation, but these aren’t your normal desk jobs. (Plus, it doesn’t hurt that it helps pay for more globetrotting.) Visitors can find work teaching, farming, or lending a hand in local pubs. British nannies may not actually carry carpetbags or ride umbrellas over London (like PL Travers’s Mary Poppins), but working as a live-in au pair provides an opportunity to become close to a family and a particular place.
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For 52 years, we have published the world’s favorite budget travel guides, written entirely by students and updated every year. With pen and notebook in hand and a few changes of underwear stuffed in our backpacks, we spend months roaming the globe in search of travel bargains.
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