The British Invasion is back. For almost a week, students from Radley College stormed campus in the hopes of learning a bit more about the American culture, and apparently everyone was pleasantly surprised.

“American people are much more attractive,” said Yannis Gidopolous of Radley. The feeling was mutual, according to Emma Woodberry, ’15: “They were so cute. I love their British accents.”

But these students weren’t just here so that Kent Students could gawk at them, they also provided interesting conversations in classes, broadening many Kent students’ worldviews.

After touring George Chilvers around for three days of classes, I also felt that I’d learned a lot about Radley, England, and Europe in general. We talked about everything from classes, to foreign politics, to types of accents.

During their stay the Radleyans shadowed Kent students, learning about their day-to-day activities. “It was a lot of fun bringing him around to my classes,” said Cooper LeBlanc ’18 of the Radleyan he hosted.“I thought it was interesting to learn his perspective of the differences in our schools.”

It wasn’t just their hosts who enjoyed the Radleyans; many students enjoyed having the Brits in their classes as well. “They were extremely kind and were so open to learning everything about Kent as well as sharing things about their life at Radley,” Cassidy Tibbetts ’16 comments. “In one of my classes, I learned that they even wear robes like in Harry Potter.”

The Radley students certainly enjoyed their stay, too. When I asked them if they were surprised about anything, they had a variety answers:

•             “I wasn’t expecting people to be so friendly.” – Max Benson
•             “Yes, the people were so nice!” – Charles Saunders
•             “I expected you guys to be a lot more free and liberal and loud.” – Yannis Gidopoulos
•             “I expected the opposite, that you guys would be very reserved and conservative.” – Edward Walker
•             “I didn’t expect Kent to be quite so similar to Radley.” – Charles Saunders
•             “I was expecting the sort of stereotypical high school characters.”- Max Benson
•             “I think the weather is much more diverse. It’s a lot more cold in the winter and hot in the summer.” – Joe Trafford

Something that’s worth noting is that the Radley kids loved our food. “The food was awesome, much better than Radley’s food,” said Charles Saunders. Both Yannis and Max applauded the sugar cereal selection.

Some of the other things that the Radley chaps noted were much more unexpected: Yannis pointed out what he called the “absurdly high number of water fountains.”

Of course, their main reason behind coming to America was to perform, and they provided fantastic choral and orchestral performances for the whole school.

The student body raved about Radley’s top-notch performances. Their orchestra provided a refreshingly fast-paced Jupiter and Crown-Imperial. Their choir gave an excellent a capella performance of “I need you, I love you, I want you.” Especially their joint-piece with our Jazz Band was brilliant. Audrey Ablan ’15 even proclaimed, “Their voices were as good as their looks!”

We’re sad to see its Radley friends leave campus, but hopeful that some of us may soon see Radley for ourselves, dearth of sugar cereals and water fountains and all.