My name is Gorka and I want to talk about my two weeks in harbury.
In my opinion, Harbury is a very beautiful village, very calm etc. I met a lot of interesting people and from my point of view Harbury is very well situated if you want to visit other interesting places in England and is a very good place to study English.
About the famili, Andrew and Jenny helped me a lot with my english and with my stay in Harbury.
I’m Abel Otero, a spanish student. I arrived at Bristol Airport July 1st 2012 where my teacher, Shona Brown was waiting me.
I stayed doing the course Teacher’s house 2:1 in the Bear House Farm. My house was near to Wedmore, a little village in the country. I lived with Shona, John (her husband), Mikkel (student from Denmark) and only during the first week, Shona’s daughter was with us.
Our course had 45 hours divided in 15 hours per week. In my opinion these lessons were very quickly and also, I enjoyed while I was learning new things. Furthermore, Shona helped me prepare for my FCE exams.
We always tried to make easy the lessons with different things (eg. Watching videos, doing speaking games…) There were in the mornings.
In the afternoon, sometimes we had free-time and others we went to some cities or villages (Bristol, Frome, Wells). Moreover, during the week-ends we visited others cities such as Bath or the Air Army Museum as a suggestion that I said because of loving aircrafts.
On the other hand, we were in a Jazz Festival since the Danish student likes music. Also, the last night we went to Wells Cathedral to heart a classical music concert.
In my opinion, these three weeks for me were the best in my life and I recommend to people who are in doubt to come because they will have a nice time with another family learning and speaking English.
Hi! I’m Palina! Now I’m going to share my experiences with You!
I came to Bristol to spend 3 weeks, preparing for the Ielts exam. It was the first time I had chosen a home-stay teaching course. (Before I had done only group courses). Of course, before I came, I had been a bit nervous about my teacher and her family, whether I would get on well with them… But when I met Lesley (this is my teacher’s name) at the bus station, where she was waiting for me, I realised, that all my fears had been absolutely groundless! She turned out to be a very friendly, kind, smiling sincere woman!
Lesley is also an excellent teacher! We had very interesting lessons, despite all the hard work for the exam. My teacher gave me not only compulsory preparation for Ielts, but also different additional knowledge on themes I was interested in. For instance, I gained very useful language skills in such areas as banking, drama, law… Moreover, I had practice during the days talking to Lesley’s family. In the evenings we had long conversations at the dinner table. It was wonderful!
Besides lessons I had nice spare time. Several times a week I went sightseeing with Lesley. Among our excursions were: Bristol Zoo, the Clifton suspension Bridge, the MShed museum, cinema, trip to Bath… And it was also a good time to improve my English. I also went shopping and explored the local area by myself.
So, thanks to this friendly, hospitable family I managed to improve my English. It really became more fluent. I am pleased, because this, not the exam, was the main purpose of my trip to England.
To conclude, I just want to say that I’m very happy to have had 3 unforgettable weeks in Bristol, with Lesley and her family! I really felt at home!
For three weeks I stayed with Kate Irving in her home. Her family welcomed me very kindly. Kate worked with me for my preparation for the CAE. I enjoyed the lessons very much and I learned a lot. Furthermore I liked the excursions to different interesting places like Cambridge, Hatfield House and London. Kate’s husband showed me St. Albans and London with very good explanations.
