Schuljahr 2007 - 08

My Exchange Visit to the Anglo-European School in Ingatestone 2007

My Exchange Visit to the Anglo-European School in Ingatestone, Essex –Great Britain29^th September 2007 – 24^th November 2007

The school
The school is a quiet new building. It´s bigger than our school, so at first we had some problems finding the rooms. Every subject has its own room facilities.

If you take a look at the art room, you can see big walls full of art projects, creative projects. I think that the teachers do more activities with the students than in Germany. Pupils in England have to learn more at home than in school lessons.
The rules are very strict, and if they don´t follow them you get a detention. The children, who don´t live in Ingatestone come to school by train or school bus. The first time I rode on a school bus I thought that the driver was crazy, because we were crashing into every tree.

School  starts at 7:55 o´clock.

Everyone have their individual timetable and every teacher has his own classroom, that means, that the students have to change rooms for the lessons.Every morning, the first 5 minutes, the whole school has registration. After two following lessons they have a 15-minute- break. We usually went to the benches behind the school on the schoolyard. Students are allowed to play football in the breaks in the big schoolyard. Most children are in the dinning hall in the lunch break(60 minutes,
5 th lesson),buying expensive, but warm  delicious meals or they stay in the schoolyard. On Tuesdays, year 10 go to registration after school instead of having an assembly.

Everyday Life
Kayleigh´s mother  picked us up after school every day, because there was no school bus. .It was 4 o´clock when we arrived home and I usually took Sam, the dog, out for a walk first. I loved walking out there, just because of the landscape. In England everything is gray, but there is not that much farming as in Germany . I could not take enough photos of the beautiful old trees. It was dark when I got back home.Dinner was ready - usuallly pasta, self-made,vegetarian burgers or Yorkshire Puddings. I loved it.

Kayleigh was often somewhere else.Our relation wasn´t very good. At first we had laughed a lot, but then she had started to ignore me.I had a better relation to her brother, Charlie and to her mother. All in all, I think I talked much more to them than to Kayleigh. Her little brother was very cute, but I had problems at first to like him, because I don´t like little children very much.
Kayleigh’s father is funny, but very strict with Kayleigh and Charlie. I appreciate that they always asked me what I wanted to do the following weekend. Most weekends I spent my time with the other exchange partners in London or Chelmsford.

In the last week my relation to Kayleigh began to get better again. She finally told me that I had upset her, because of the way I behave. I apologized. She also said that she was not sure about coming to Germany.

On the last day they invited me for the summerbreak. I would love to return to England , and shall only do so if Kayleigh has no problem with that.

What is different to Germany

Everyone knows that the cars drive on the left side of the road and that the steering wheel is on the right handside but there are many more differences. The first thing I noticed is that in contrast to many countries every house is built of bricks and the pupils have to wear school uniforms for 11 years of their lives. After these years they are in e 6th form when they are allowed to wear whatever they want to.
Every school has their own school luniform.
The children, who go to school come from every part of the country (some people ride to school for two hours and another 2 hours back).
People are very polite.
About 30 times every day you hear’sorry’ and ‘thank you’. It´s very impolite to stare at people in the street or in the underground.You should also know, that most people in England feel upset if you use insulting or swear words. What I also noticed is that the streets are very clean, although it is very complicated to find a bin.

That is the way it should be like in Germany , too.

I can’t wait to go back to this country and meet my host family again. Alexia Oprean, 9d