Life at Bellerbys College

Easter Break

Posted by Jag

Hello,

Easter break - is it a holiday?  Well, not exactly for me and my class mates.  We would rather call it "study leave".  I am doing I.G.C.S.E and our final exams are in May and June.  Teachers tell us to have a nice holiday but how can we have a nice holiday if we are going to take our final exams one month later! 

I am doing Maths, Chemistry, English, Computing and Accounting.  We can only choose three other subjects as Maths and English are compulsory.

We have five hours of each subject per week.  My friend, his name is Mark, he is from Hong Kong.  He enjoys Maths and Computing whereas I enjoy English and Computing.  We have fun in lesson, he helps me out when I dont understand and I do the same if he doesn't understand.

I love this college becuase you can get all your work done in class.  The best thing is that we have a small group with a maximum of around eight students per class.  This means our teacher can sort out problems and concentrate more on everyone in the class.

I usually finish at around 2:45pm or at the latest 5pm, depending on my timetable. Then I walk or sometimes cycle (if I am not feeling lazy) to my house where I have my dinner ready for me by my host mother.  She cooks really nice food, I really enjoy it.

Now I have got one day left until I break up for the Easter holiday and I have lots of studying to do for my exams. I will do so during my holiday so that I don't need to panic when I come back to college. I hope you enjoy your Easter holidays becuase I really wont be able to! I am actually looking forward to my exams because I just want to get them over and done with so I can have a proper holiday.

All my teachers have given me a lot of past paper do which will be really helpful so I can pratice how to deal with the type of questions which examiners write.  And hopefully I can achieve the grades which I am aiming for.  I have never felt so busy in my holiday before but I have to do what I have to do.

Everyone in my class will be doing the same thing as I am this Easter break but what about you?

Easter is Coming!!

Posted by Ksenia

Hello!

The end of term is coming very soon and actually I am a very naughty girl – I am going back to Russia even earlier – on 15th of March.  The Vice Principal of Bellerbys Brighton, Mr Corcut, was very nice to give me permission to go and in return I am coming back early to prepare for the BIG event – mock exams.  We have nearly finished the syllables in certain subjects, so I will have lots of revision to do… But I definitely won’t think about it during the holidays!

On Wednesday the attention of all AS students was focused on the presentation given by LSE, UCL, Kings, and last (but not least!!!) Imperial College of London.  One more time we realised how great it is to study in London at such prestigious places. 

Anyway, most of the AS students here are dreaming to study in one of these fabulous universities.  The talk made me go and visit the Imperial College website again and have a look at their courses.  Most of them sound fantastic and and I still can’t make my mind between Biochemistry, Biochemistry with Management, and Biochemistry with a year in industry (as you can see the only thing I am quite certain about is my favourite biochemistry, it’s a good start anyway!).

Last Saturday there was an interesting talk at Bellerbys as part of Brighton Science Festival.  It was about fusion – the process by which a huge amount of energy can be produced.  The realisation of this project is still quite far away in the future, but potentially it can give the mankind an unlimited source of energy (sounds exciting, doesn't it?) so we were really inspired by the idea.

Go Karting

Posted by Jag

Hey.

In Cambridge we do a lot of things together outside school.  Last term, our welfare officer, Marcela, organised a activity for us to do at the weekend.  We went for go-karting.  Twenty students signed up for it and we all agreed that it was one of the best activites we ever had.

Although I only came 6th I really enjoyed it.  It was really good fun we had at least eight races each.  As we were a large group it was also quite cheap as well!

Everyone loved this trip and we can't wait to get back on the karts again.

An Unusual Day

Posted by Sam

Life is boring, I would say.  In order to make it much more interesting, you can do something to discover the hidden and abnormal things in usual days.  Here are some examples.

While you are waiting for the bus in the morning, close your eyes, listen to different car engines and try to recognise the modes.  If you are interested in cars, that is.  You can try others like birds and that sort of things.

Then, you can read a novel on the way to the college.  Currently, I am reading ‘Atonement’ and falling in love in Cecelia, played by Kiera Knightley in the film.  It is not good for your eyes though.

During the lesson, you can anticipate the gestures and tunes made by your teachers and classmates, provided your brain can handle them simultaneously.  On the other hand, it can be found the abnormal things through different time period, especially in some particular days.  Apparently, the students are happy to meet the holidays when they having the last lesson at Friday.

It is inevitable that we must respect others in the library.  Fun can still be found though.  Through the observation and making eye contacts, hidden things are shown.  How to manage a library I think may require a variety of skills.  For me, it seems that the library is a laboratory where I can apply the theories I learn in my mind.  (I forgot to write it in my personal statement…ha ha)  You may think using different motivation theories to manage different people so as to keep the environment quiet and harmonious.

After school, you can listen to the BBC radio.  This is beneficial to foreign students beyond doubt.  Afterwards, why not turn on the television and watch a Euro football game with your roommate.  Football is so famous in United Kingdom that it is always a topic between the guys.  I haven’t had the chance to watch a match in a stadium yet though I hope to one day.

Cultures of Valentine

Posted by Shiny

A couple of weeks ago, there was a questionnaire from Psychology coursework spreading around Bellerbys collecting information about love.  Love may have become an inevitable topic in our daily life.  Today I would like to talk about a hit topic which is about different cultures of Valentine’s Day and what love means in different ways.  Although I am not an expert on love, I have attempted to exchange ideas about love with some students in our college.

Above all, let’s talk about marriage.  Students from different places have different opinions about this.  For instance, in China, one man mustn’t have more than one wife, although in the ancient China, some wealthy men could.  As for the culture of some countries, a man can have more than one wife.

A few days ago, I saw a piece of news telling that Muslim people in the UK can have up to four wives although this is illegal according to the law.  It is said that the British government would subsidize those who are legally having over one partner within Britain.  Obviously, the British culture is so tolerant and humanistic, even the law would allow moral cultural issues to happen. 

I once had a chat with one of my Nigerian female friends in Bellerbys whose father has got “dozens of” wives.  I was shocked and I asked her whether she though this is kind of discrimination.  What she said did make me give in.  She told me that, “Of course I don’t think it is.  Who makes money and earns the living for your whole family?  It’s your dad, right?  That’s it.”  It is indeed a fair comment if we think in terms of contribution to a family.  Yet some casual empiricists may argue that women also devote themselves to their family to a large extent.  Whilst what men and women do were different, it is not sensible to compare with each other.  No matter what people think, as long as there is an agreement between women and men, everything is fine.

Studying in Cambridge

Posted by Jag

Hi, I am Jag from India, studying at Bellerbys College, Manor Campus, Cambridge.  I am doing IGCSE (International GCSE) this year and then I will be moving on to the A Level course which is taught at the other Bellerbys Cambridge campus called Queens.

I would like to share some of my experinces in Cambridge.  I think Cambridge is the best place for studying because it has got everything that students need, for example, clubs, cinema, arcade zones, branded shops, a really good library and lots of different types of restaurants.  It has also got lots of historical sites which are pretty interesting to check out.

Soon I will be getting back to you about what students do outside classes. Get ready for it... lol... as there are so many things which we do!

"Noi" in Italia...Posting in Order Not to Forget It

Posted by Shiny

为了忘却的纪念 (written on 1st-6th March 2008)

Sometimes I enjoy writing hybrid entries with both Chinese and English as I find it easier to express my feeling to an optimal degree.

写下这篇日志，不是为了记忆，而是为了去纪念，为了短暂地忘却这段不堪回首的壮丽诗篇。 Memory is a knife, it always hurts me.  But I still cherish it.  That’s why I usually put it down and keep it inside a box.  Perhaps in a few years later, it will not hurt me again after I’ve learnt how to handle it.  By then, it would be a souvenir to me from life.

“兄弟姐妹就像天上飘下的雪花，本来谁也不认识谁，可是，一落到地上，结成冰，化成水，就永远也分不开了。”这句话用来形容意大利之行之后的感想就再合适不过了。在那所学校里，据说是专业的问题，三分之二的学生都是女生，我想，在那些欢乐的日子里，我们都已经成为了其中的一员，想起来，我们应该亲切地叫他们“姐妹们”。

There were so many things going on in my head these days and if I didn’t write them down, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on something else.  I should at least put a full stop on the journey.  After all, it was really an indispensably pleasant experience and I don’t want it to fade out in my brain by any means.  好想有一部带有时间留驻功能的神奇照相机，也许，在未来的一天里，真的可以凝固时间。人们都说照相机是记录人们美好一瞬的记忆天使。虽然这位天使总是给人以片面和局部的回忆，也许，这已经足够，相外之人与事也许会在记忆深处随着岁月的蹉跎而逐渐模糊和褪色，但我们依然能想起她们大概的轮廓和音容笑貌，想起与她们一起经历过风雨，一起看过很美丽的彩虹，想起来却也充满温馨。Therefore I've decided to write every piece of memory that I can remember so that it fits my own perfectionism.

Chinese New Year 2008 @ Brighton & Hove

Posted by Shiny

I've mentioned the Chinese New Year before but it was actually just the beginning of it.  What I came across later tended to be much more eye-catching.  This is a marvelous day in my life.  It was supposed to be a simple Chinese New Year performance, but then we’ve made it into a great success.

Before I start talking about what happened in Brighton, I would like to recall the memories about our trip to the London School of Economics.  On Sunday, 3rd, Feb, we went to LSE for a Chinese New Year performance.  There were three cars taking us to LSE from Brighton.  It took us approximately two hours to get there due to the traffic congestion in London even though it was Sunday. (If we can by any means improve the traffic condition in a city, it would definitely make a big difference to people’s life. Travelling is inevitable in our daily life.  Sometimes we travel for fun while sometimes we travel for work.  No matter what the reasons are, transportation is extremely important.  That’s one of the reasons why I would like to study transportation engineering of Civil Engineering).  The traffic was a bit annoying as I had car-sickness.

After arriving at LSE, we paid a visit inside the Confucius Institute of LSE then we went for our performance in the campus of LSE.  Many volunteers from LSE, Imperial and UCL were working with us. As we were in a new circumstance, we unprofessional actors didn’t do as well as we did in the rehearsal. But we have tried our best.  And after dinner, at about 7p.m. we went to the Old Theatre to prepare for the performance.

Bella Italia...

Posted by Ksenia

 

Hello!

Hope you all have had a great half-term.  Personally, I’ve had a fantastic one.  As I’ve already mentioned in my previous post, we went to Italy as apart of the Europa+ project.  Initially we were planning to go via Milan to Bari and then travel by bus to Rodi Garganico, which is a small city on the coast in the south east of Italy.  However, there was a strike in the airport in Milan so we decided to change our tickets and flew via Rome.  Веcause of that we had some problems on the way back they just could not check us in.  But now I am in Brighton, continuing my studies, so finally we could get on the plane (some of us would prefer to stay in Italy I guess).

The journey was quite long and tiring but we did not lose our optimism.  On the bus we were inventing a fairy-tale where each person was telling only one phrase at a time.  Actually, it is quite a good and funny way to kill the time.  We ended up with something so stupid that it was even hard to imagine where such a strange ideas have come from (I believe the journey was really too long for us).

When we got to Rodi the Italians were waiting for us.  We all were in different host-families, and we even lived in different villages.  The first evening was quite strange.  I quickly found out that the English of the girl with whom I was staying (her name is Francesca) was not much better than my Italian (and I do not speak Italian at all!!).  Fortunately she could speak some French which I adapted a bit to make it sound more Italian (I am afraid to imagine what my French teacher would tell me if she heard me at that moment).  Her mum knew several words in English, but her father spoke nothing except his mother tongue.  Nevertheless I was surprised by the amount of effort they all made to try to say something and understand me.  It made me think that i should try to learn some Italian as well.