Language Stay in Bournemouth, England – One Electronics Engineering Apprentice's Experience

Last fall, I went to Bournemouth for two weeks for my first language stay. I’d been looking forward to it for weeks beforehand. The adventure finally began on 13 October. Our whole class met at Zurich airport. After a bumpy flight to London Luton, followed by a two-hour bus journey, we arrived at the BEET Language Centre at around 9 p.m.

My host mom was already there waiting for me. Together, we made the short walk to her house, where I was to live for the next two weeks with three other exchange students.

School life began the next morning. We were in class every day from 10.30 a.m. to 3 p.m. We were separated into different groups. There were three lessons a day, each lasting an hour and 30 minutes. The most important part of school was the speaking practice. We discussed many different topics. There were four different nationalities in my class, which made the speaking exercises really interesting and challenging.

In school, we also focused on interdisciplinary skills as part of our IDAF (interdisciplinary project) work. We had to research a particular topic, write a summary of it, and then present it. I think it went very well. We were awarded a grade 5 (“good”).

After school, our host mom always had tea waiting for us. She was really nice and her house was lovely. We went out most evenings, so we ate in a different restaurant every day and always had a good time. In the two weeks I was there, we did lots of activities, like bowling, paintball, swimming, shopping, mini golf, the cinema, and lots of other stuff.

The return flight from Bournemouth was smooth and pleasant. I'm already looking forward to the next language stay.