Nelli and Kaisa in England 3.3 - 9.3.2013

The visiting West Kirby Grammar School was in it's entirety very opening experience. It was very interesting to see how school system works in some other country than in Finland, where we have had very highly qualited education our whole life. When we arrived to Manchester Airport, the first thing I noticed was wet marine climate. It was so nice to feel warm air before that all freezing winter air in Finland. It was like Finland in spring. At the beginning I had problems with understanding English, because my vocabulary is compact and the accent was funny so I often had to ask people repeat what they said. My days in West Kirby started always with a bus trip to school.The busses were two-storied and one-way ticket cost 50 pence. So the school trip wasn't free as we have. Before lessons, the students (which all were girls, except two boys) gathered to meet their form master who gave them information. School days went quite similar. They had to hours one subject, then break, then 2 hours again, lunch and then 2 hours one subject more, so quite long days. I think that everything worked better in school because for example, there was dress code, what included only grey or black coloured clothes. Also everyone had to call their teachers ”miss” or ”mister”. Compared to our very loud lessons and everyone were very attended to listen teachers and when students did their assigments, the whole class was quiet. My host Alice had lessons for psychology, chemistry, biology and english. If I understood right, they had chosen themselves those subjects. My favourite lesson was about main textures and netspeak. Psychology lessons were nice too because we had had all those things in our psychology course. One very significant difference was food. Because in Finland we eat a lot. Like all the time and very big portions. In England we ate breakfast which was often cereals with milk. We took lunch from home but I usually bought more to eat from school cafeteria. Lunch break in school was one hour and then we sat on lunchroom chatting and eating. My host-family was very kind and caring. On our freetime in the evening, we watched tv and ate a dinner in front of tv. One day we went shopping to Liverpool which looked nice and there was cool old buildings. We also went to movies one night and had a sleepover with all kinds of delicious delicacies. General view of England was nice. Kind and helpful people, lot of sandwiches, same looking houses, lot of people from different countries and families. Maybe some day I'll go back and see more places!