My language stay finishes soon, and I have very mixed feelings. Somehow I want to stay here because the school is great. The teachers and students are all sympathetic and the lessons are different. On the other hand, I am really looking forward to seeing my family again, and always talking English got tiring by now.
The school is great. I enjoyed the morning classes. The afternoon classes were not as good as I hoped, yet I learned some things there. Either that's just because
of the teacher or because of the different levels. In the afternoon classes, we had another class. It was a mix of higher intermediate and advanced. What I do not understand is that there were
many high levelled elective classes, so why don't they just put all the advanced in one class, and all the intermediates in another one. I think I improved the most in my vocabulary and the
fluency of my speaking. We often did exam work to prepare all the exam students, but all the exercises also improved, for example, the use of prepositions. By now, I think that prepositions just
want to destroy a students life. There are no real rules but they just appear everywhere.
I already knew that I would be one of the youngest students before. Most of my classmates were in their mid-twenties. The school had evening program but I couldn't participate because all of the
activities were for eight-teen plus. Quite a lot of the other younger students came in groups. They spent their evenings together and talked in their mother toungue, so I didn't find many new
friends. In my class there was only one other young woman that came alone. She was from Poland and only stayed here for three weeks, but we still keep in touch.
Beside school, I enjoyed the activities that I did. The places I visited were worth it. Edinburgh is a magnificent city and the centre has buildings with great architecture.
Even though the city is big, I never got lost. You can get everywhere by bus. The only place you have to know are Old Town and New Town. Together they are not very small, but I found my ways
around pretty fast. There are some homeless people but not as many as I expected. There is also not as much rubbish on the floor as you would expect. There are rubbish bins everywhere in the
city. A lot of museums and attractions are for free or for a little price. Only the castle is very overpriced. They have a very wide selection of museums. Normally I am not really fond of
museums, but I visited them any way. Yet, they were all quite fascinating.
My host family was great as well. My room was lovely. The food was great and I was not as picky as usual. They eat a big dinner and only something small for lunch. I mostly ate a sandwich. There were two nice sandwich bars close to my school.
Now I am very happy and proud of myself that I managed to get along all on my own. I wasn't homesick and was able to enjoy these four weeks to the fullest.
After this month, I am looking forward to seeing my family again and going on holiday. I already packed my stuff and will be picked up from my family tomorrow morning. Then we will go to the Highlands for one week.