Monday, 10th May

Monday, 10^th May

Today was our first day in Cambridge. We had to meet at 8.45 in the morning. Personally I was afraid of oversleeping because of a different bedroom, time zone, atmosphere etc. but I got up on time. After my breakfast, which consisted of some cornflakes and a glass of orange juice, I started to look for the way to school. On my information sheet from the language school it said that the way to school takes about 25 minutes on foot. It was a long way through the streets of Cambridge. Luckily I possess a PDA (a small, compact computer you can also phone with) with an integrated GPS and a navigator. So a friendly computer voice (of course in GermanJ) navigated me to the school. It took about 45 minutes. I was on time. Firstly we met our teachers, who gave us some information about meetings and the school. Some minutes later our classes started. Our teacher is called Tendayi and his parents come from Zimbabwe but he was born in England. He is able to speak about seven languages. He’s a very friendly and nice guy. He often jokes around and everybody starts laughing. This morning our first lessons were quite easy. At the beginning we had to write an assessment based on English grammar in general. But it wasn’t too difficult. Furthermore we learned something about culture in different parts of the United Kingdom. During school we have two breaks. In one of these breaks we got our bicycles. They didn’t have enough bicycles for men so I got one for women but it doesn’t matter. The quality of some bicycles is very bad, which means that they don’t have an adequate standard. During our breaks we can also buy something in the school cafeteria. However I think the prices are very expensive. I paid exactly £1.20 for a croissant, this are about 2.00 CHF. So the school cafeteria is more expensive than ours in Kreuzlingen. Some mates and I went eating in Cambridge’s “Subway”, a well known fast-food restaurant. We ate some sandwiches there. Our teachers organized a rally tour to get to know Cambridge. It was very interesting. Cambridge is a very nice place. You can see the tradition and the culture of many years. There are so many different colleges in Cambridge and also so many students coming from different countries. After the rally tour we had some free time. In the evening I went out with some friends. We visited the historic centre of Cambridge. We ordered a glass of original English beer in a pub. Unfortunately it tasted a little bit strange and not very good (at least to our taste) so we still prefer Coca Cola. At 10 o’clock we returned to our host families. A very interesting and lovely day is over. I’m looking forward to the next days…

Simon Dietrich 3Md