Monday 17.05.10

The sun was shining on my face, so I woke up. I looked at my watch: 5.30 am. Hell, this is too early! I closed the curtain and tried to fall asleep again. But in this moment my “host brother”, an Arabian guy, turned on his radio. Now the chance to fall asleep was definitively over, because Arabian music isn’t helpful to get back to sleep. So I got up and because I didn’t have any idea what to do at 5.30 am I began to watch a film on my laptop. The film’s called “Lord of the Rings”, do you know it? I hope so; it’s a very good film… But anyway, I’ve seen this film so many times that I fell asleep again. The second time I woke up because of my alarm clock. With some difficulties I managed (with a delay of a quarter of an hour) to get out of my bed. After I’d taken a shower I went downstairs to eat breakfast. It wasn’t a typical breakfast with scrambled eggs, bacon and Earl Grey Tea. It was like in Switzerland: cereals with milk and toast with marmalade and tea. At home I had been looking forward to having a typical English breakfast for the first time in my life, but shit happens, the only typical thing was the tea, at least one thing.

After breakfast I took my school bag and race in a hurry to school. I was a little bit late, because after waiting for ten minutes the tea still wasn’t enough cool to drink without danger. I managed my tea-problem in this way, that first I put some cool water in it. Then I could drink one half, for the other half the time was too scarce, so I poured it down in the sink.

After my brilliant way to solve the tea-problem, I was able to go to school. The traffic was horrible but I arrived at the school without an accident.

The first half of the school time this morning, we had a teacher called Helen. Her lessons were… let’s say: not so interesting. I won’t to tell more about this…

In the second half we had a teacher who’s called “Tendai”, I don’t know how to spell his name, but something like this it would be. His lessons were… let’s say: amusing. He has a kind of humor I like very much. So, the second half was much faster over than the first one. My fist impressions (I’ve only been here since Friday evening) about school here in Cambridge were that when we have a capable teacher, the lessons make sense and fun and I’m able to improve my English.

Because we only had 50 minutes of lunchtime, we went to McDonald’s. When you have only 50 minutes time to eat, you must have fast food, so McDonald’s. (It wasn’t really good food.)

In the afternoon I had to listen to some presentation about special places in Cambridge which had been prepared by the others.
The first one was by Thierry and Patrick about King’s College. I think their presentation wasn’t bad, but the two had a little bit an unfortunate way to present their work.
The second one was by Livia, Laura and Laurie about student’s life in Cambridge. It was interesting, because they had also talked to some students and had asked them about their opinion of this subject. Another good point was that they changed the location during the presentation. The only disadvantage was that sometimes it was very loud and I couldn’t hear what they said.
At least I voluntarily joined the presentation “Bridges of Cambridge” by Susanne and Bettina. This was also a successful presentation. They also showed us different places and told us something about the different bridges. For me it was especially interesting because I’d never seen the river Cam before. I noticed that there are a lot of really beautiful places around the river.

After the presentation I went to the Eagle with some friends to eat an apple pie with vanilla cream. I must say, I had never had any good experience with English food, but this apple pie… It was heaven on earth.

After this beautiful experience, heaven got lost and I was back in reality at a normal English dinner.

At approximately 8 pm I met the other guys and we went to the leisure centre to play bowling. It was very funny, but I lost all the games.

So, that’s it, all the experiences of a normal day of a Swiss student, who’s in England for only one week.

Oliver Gross