Museum Project Day and a Once in a Lifetime Trip to London’s West End (Buket Babataş Aydın , ITP 2019, Turkey)

Written by Buket Babataş Aydın, Independent researcher and PhD candidate (ITP 2019, Turkey)

I’m Buket Babataş Aydın from Ankara, Turkey. I’m an independent researcher and also a PhD student at Ankara University at the department of Prehistory. First I need to say that it is a great opportunity to be here in The British Museum to be a part of ITP. Our days are full of learning and visiting, but unfortunately we don’t have much time for seeing the British Museum itself!

Today our programme was very busy. This was Museum Project Day for all of the ITP fellows. İn the morning we all separated into six groups to see specific museums. Lovely Balqees (ITP 2019, Palestine), Abdulrahman (ITP 2019, Sudan) and I went to London Transport Museum. I really expected not much before going to the museum, but it exceeded all of my expectations. It was fun! It is not a large museum, but they made me feel like I was going back in time because of their presentation. And also It helped me to understand London better as a city by showing the historical development of transportation. I can clearly see that the children in the museum are also enjoying the museum as much as I do. They can reach and touch every object in the museum. After our visit we returned to the British Museum to share our impressions.

And in the evening we all we all wore our most beautiful dresses for a special event. We already made lots of visits in and outside of London before today but this evening we were at the Her Majesty’s Theatre to see the musical, the Phantom of the Opera. At this point I want to say that I’m a huge fan of musicals. I see many musicals in my life but this time it is different because I see a real musical in a real London theatre. You can’t imagine what my feelings are. İt is a breathtaking moment for me. It is basically a love story but the costumes, lighting, stage, decors even the special effects and performance was absolutely amazing. I don’t want to tell a lot about the musical itself but I can only say that everyone should watch it at least once in their life. So, we had another great moment to be remembered after we leave the programme!

Buket