Blog
Week 1:
23rd of June: That’s the day I travelled to Bournemouth. It was a very pleasant journey. For the way from London Heathrow to Bournemouth I booked a transfer. The driver was a man from Romania, and it was a really amusing and entertaining ride. They were also two other students from Switzerland on the same transfer and we discussed about a lot of different things with the Romanian. When I finally arrived in Bournemouth, I met my host family for the first time. At first, I was a bit nervous, but it changed rapidly. The first impression was really great, I shortly talked to them and afterwards they showed me my nice little room. When I had finished to unpack my suitcase, I decided to walk to the school and after that to the beach. It took me about 40 minutes to the beach and five minutes to the school. That was the only time I walked to the beach because it was a quite long way. The next days I purchased day tickets for the bus, so I didn’t have to walk.
On Monday school started at 9 o'clock and I had to write the classification test. Fastly, I met a bunch of new friendly people, but I also realised that a lot of the students come from Switzerland I think about seventy percent. However, I tried to go to the people which aren’t swiss or when I talked to swiss people that I only used the English language. This day we received all the information we needed.
The following days, we had class in the morning. I am satisfied with my class. It has the level upper intermediate (B2+), that’s ok, I guess. Maybe I’ll change to a higher class sometime, but at the moment I’m totally fine with it. Nearly each day this week, I went twice to the beach. Once in the afternoon and once after dinner. I also swam a few times in the sea. The air temperature is very pleasant compared to Switzerland and the rest of Europe. It’s around 25 degrees and the water temperature around 18 degrees which is kind of refreshing.
On Saturday, I went for a trip to Poole and to the Brownsea Island, which was organised from the school. It’s a very beautiful little island with lovely beaches and animals on it. We saw some peacocks, red squirrels and deers.
Week 2:
The time runs fast, it’s already my second week here in Bournemouth (UK). In this week the timetable changed. The teachers call it the “zig zag timetable”. One day our class has in the morning school than the other day in the afternoon. The school made this, because this week plenty other students arrived, and the school building isn’t big enough for all students. This way they can handle a big mass of students.
This week I again met a lot of new kind people. Mainly Saudi Arabian, Belgian, Italian and French people. We discovered all the delicious restaurants in the town. Each day we tried a new one and we followed the recommendations of other people, for example the ones from our host families. Of course, we also spent many hours at the beach. In favour of my fitness I went for a run in the Queens Park. I genuinely love this place. You have no distraction and a lot of green space like forest and grassland. Therefore, it’s the perfect place for running and relaxation.
In terms of school, I really like the lessons here the teachers make very exciting classes. I have the pure joy to participate. We do a lot of writing and speaking, which is the best way to improve my English skills. These are the things I have to work on, and I recognise the daily progression.
On Saturday I once again went on trip, which was organised from school. We went to the university town Oxford. Firstly, we had a short town tour with the whole group. Later on, we had time to explore the town on our own. However, for my taste it’s not a beautiful town. There are some lovely buildings, but it’s literally not my type of town. When you like a lot of museums and buildings with a nice architecture, then it’s probably your town. Me personally, I’d rather recommend going somewhere else for a trip.
I’m still curious to explore other towns, new people, delicious food, beautiful landscape and lots of other things. I’m really looking forward on my next two weeks.
Week 3:
Time flies and only one week is left of my language stay. However, what have I experienced last week. In school we had a presentation about the typical food and drink in the UK. In addition, we have written a lot of stories, summaries and other sorts texts. Our teacher is very amusing, he always tells us some stories and the end of these are always really unexpected.
On Monday new students arrived and we became a bigger class. Unfortunately, a few students also had to leave on Saturday, but that’s the life we have to cope with goodbyes. In the evening I went to the “club night”. This is organised from school and you can play table tennis and other fun games.
Luckily, the whole three weeks I’m here now, it never rained. That’s superb weather to go every day to the beach and to enjoy my time here. The temperature isn’t scorching, but enjoyable in average about 22 degrees.
On Saturday, I went in a huge shopping centre outside the town. Nevertheless, I haven’t bought something, except food. After that I was exhausted, and I just relaxed in my bed.
On Sunday, a few other students and I had planned to cycle to the Old Harry Rocks. We rented a bike for 12£ and afterwards we took the route along the coast. As we arrived at Sandbanks, that’s the village where we should have taken the ferry, we found out that the ferry was out of service for about 2 weeks. Then we went in a surf shop to ask what we could do instead. They recommended us to hire a boat, because one of the other students is over 18. So, we hired a boat for one hour and it was really fun. That was the best thing ever happen after this disappointment.
I try to make the best out of my last week here in Bournemouth (UK). I already know, I will miss this incredible time I had here.
Week 4:
My last week here in Bournemouth was a bit different compared to the other weeks. First of all, the weather changed in the last four days and we couldn’t chill at the beach in the afternoon and evening. Unfortunately, it rained for the first time. So, I went shopping or made some indoor activities. What’s also quite fun in this weather is walking through the parks.
When I want to go to the town, I take the bus. And next to the bus stop, where I jump on the bus, there is a sport car shop. The shop is called “Premier Sport Solutions”. Thus, I can see some really nice cars every time I went on the bus.
One time a man from that company also allowed us to go inside and have a nearer look at the cars. That was a superb experience because the other students who have to go on the same bus are very keen on cars.
Monday was the only day we went down to the beach after dinner. However, it was not that enjoyable because of the temperature. Well, then we decided to make a fire and so we did. That was the best decision we made because afterwards it was very pleasant.
On Friday, the last day with the others, we were eating lunch in a delicious restaurant. In addition, one part of us went shopping the other part went surfing. I went shopping because the weather wasn’t that good for surfing. On our shopping tour we also discovered a VR gaming shop and we tried it out. It was quite fun to play multiplayer games in VR while it was raining outside.
For dinner we went once again in an Italian restaurant. After that, the big goodbye round came and we planned to meet somewhen again and then we will do something together.