Submitted by Patrick Reed on the 2014 winter session study abroad program in London, England sponsored by the Department of History…
After our first day of class and our second day in London, a group of my newly-acquainted classmates and I decided to head to Trafalgar Square to check out The National Gallery and surrounding sculptures. We knew to expect Nelson’s Column with its bronze lion guardians, but we were shocked to find a giant blue hen towering over the square! The sculpture, created by German artist Katharina Fritsch, was just installed in July and will stand for 18 months on the square’s Fourth Plinth. The 15.5 foot tall fiberglass bird was a welcome sight for our jet-lagged group and a great way to transition into our program.
We asked a passerby to take our photo and tried to explain our excitement at seeing the statue, but, unsurprisingly, having a fighting Blue Hen as your school mascot can be difficult to explain. Also, it didn’t help that our photographer thought that Delaware was near Texas!
In the end, we all decided that finding the statue was good luck and took it as a sign of great things to come for the rest of the program!