Our day in London

On Saturday 17^th April, three students from Albert-Einstein Schule in Germany came to England to experience our culture and traditions.

Each student stayed with an English family, and I hosted Chrissy. After she had settled in, I showed her around Wath, along with Sam and his student Melanie. We looked around the time centre, and went to the fair.

On the Sunday, we went to Meadowhall, which is very similar to a shopping centre they have in Bochum. We also went to Taybarns in the evening, with Shona and her student, Lena, which they enjoyed very much, as it was a chance for then to try all kinds of different foods.

On Monday 19^th April we all visited London with Billy, Eve and Izzy. We went by train, and we arrived at around 10:30 am, at Kings Cross Station and first we bought some food, as most of us ate our lunch on the train. On the way out of Kings Cross Station, we spotted a replica of Platform 9 and ¾. Afterwards, our group travelled on the underground to the Science Museum. Our first sight of London was not what we had been expecting, and at first we were disappointed, as we expected it to be bigger, but then we realised how busy and noisy it is, and we soon began to have fun. When we arrived at the museum we went to the basement to eat lunch with children from other schools, who were all quite small. After lunch, we split into groups of three to complete a quiz sheet, for which we needed to find certain exhibits around the museum. Once our quizzes were complete, we had time to explore the parts of the museum that we wanted to, and there were many interesting sections to explore. At around 2.30pm, we left the museum to visit famous London sights, such as Green Park, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus and Covent Garden. We ate dinner at the local Pizza Hut, and watched a half naked street performer, who juggled a ball, a knife and a chainsaw! The teachers came to us, and we took another tube to Lambeth North, where we visited the London Eye, and looked over the river Thames. After a while, we caught the tube back to the train station, ready to go home. On the train we played a recyclable game of skittles, made from empty drinks cans.

On the Tuesday, our German students had an opportunity to look around our school. They were all shocked at the size of it and all the equipment we have, as their school is much smaller and less well equipped. They came into our lessons in the morning, and in the afternoon we watched some presentations they prepared for us. In the evening we showed them around Tesco’s, as they don’t have anything as big as that in Bochum, and Chrissy and went for a meal with my family, Shona and Lena to say goodbye.

On the Wednesday morning it was time for our students to go. We had an early start as we prepared to see them off at 7.30am. We had all had a fantastic week, and we missed them once they had gone home.

Amy + Shona