Life at Bellerbys College

May Days

Posted by Shiny

What a lovely day!  The sun is still shining happily although it is almost 7pm which reminds me that it is May already.  We don’t have an International Labour’s Day as we are not yet labour...  Shiny couldn’t help writing down his feelings about these days.

Life is just like using toothpaste.  If you don’t squeeze it harder, you will never get more from it.  Time fleets!

It has been a hard time for the Bellerbys A2 students.  The exams are coming terribly soon and we are striving to finish learning the syllabus and doing some revision.  Two months is so long as we can’t wait to have a summer holiday, yet, it is so short that we are aware that we don’t have much time for revision.

As usual, I walked through The Level (a small local park) to get back home after class.  Take a glance at the grass on the lawn, although we are not sure how painful it would be for the grass to come out of the soil if they had their own sense of feeling, they never stop growing but always keep striving and moving towards the sun. But does it encourage you?

A pleasure ground (fun fair) has just been set up in the Level.  It should be the third time for me to see it.  People immerse themselves into the atmosphere of happiness.  Of course, you can also feast our eyes on loads of fascinating girls (some say temptresses) at the fair ground.  If you feel frustrated at the moment, go to the playground to get infected by joy!  “Life is unfair.  We men are discriminated.  You see the Asian girls can easily marry Western men while we Asian boys are hardly able to form an international family.” said someone.  “How about challenging yourself by getting a foreign girlfriend, Shiny?”

The First Exam and Easter Again

Posted by Ksenia

The spring has finally arrived in Brighton.  With some sunshine (hopefully!), plenty of flowers around and fresh green leaves appearing on trees, the feeling is completely different.  It is just so natural to smile, be happy and wear short skirts! 

Nevertheless, people in Bellerbys College are becoming more and more serious and words like 'past papers', 'revision' and (the worst of all!) 'exams' can be heard everywhere in college.  During break times the library is always full and more and more students are coming there not just to chat or leave their stuff but to study in attempt to memorise as quickly as they can everything that should be learnt thought the year.

On Saturday, the 26th of April I had my Biology experiment that is considered as part of the exam.  It is a whole piece of coursework with a huge amount of tables, graphs and written work.  Introduction, method, analysis, evaluation: does not sounds very exciting, doesn't it?  However the actual experiment was real fun.

I was investigating the effect of temperature on amylase activity with starch (probably this won't tell you too much).  Firstly the experiment does not work at all as the concentration was wrong.  Then everything went pretty well until the solution started to change colour at the temperature that it actually should not do that.  I was not too disappointed because at the end of the day it gave an opportunity to write about it in my evaluation.  The whole experiment took about 3 hours and at the end everybody was very tired.  I've never thought that science could be so exhausting!

Snow in April in Oxford

Posted by Sam

Snowmen said a hello to me on the first day after I came back from Hong Kong for the Easter holidays.  It was the seventh of April and very late for snow!

The unusual spring weather in Oxford recently has discouraged me from playing football to a great extent.  Once, I played football with my friends and three strangers in the park.  It was lucky that none of us got injured as the grass was so wet.

As a die hard fan of Manchester United, I watched the Europe Champion League game against Barcelona with my room mate.  Despite the busy time at college I have got to face, I have no choice but to watch!

So far, IELTs has been the one major challenge in my life in England.  I took the exam one Saturday in April.  I knew I was not lucky enough at that time.  I was really desperate for a high mark to fulfill the requirement for my university offers.

‘May’ has numerous meanings including the fifth month of the year and expression of possibility.  All of us will have a bank holiday next week.  The students at Bellerbys Oxford will take the college photo and that will be kind of exciting I think.  I know I have got to work much harder.  At the moment it feels like there are too many uncertain factors, the main one being that I don’t know where I am going to study next academic year.

Finally, I no longer need to get fed up with checking UCAS - I got five offers last night.  One is from the University of Warwick.  Here is a quotation from the university website: ’The University of Warwick receives over 10 applications for each place available, so receiving an offer is quite an achievement.  As one of the top ten universities in the UK, we have very high quality applications and only choose the very best.  This makes you special.’  Although I made it, I'm not sure why but I don’t think it is an achievement at all.

Counting Down to the Olympics!

Posted by Shiny

The games will start in about 100 days. Recently, the 2008 Beijing Olympics torch has passed through Hong Kong and quite soon it will be relayed in my hometown. What an exciting event!  It is a pity that I can’t go back to China to witness it, but I’ve been to the torch relay in London roughly one month ago.  It was such an unforgettable experience.

On the last day of the Easter holidays, we four boys went to London to witness the relay of the 2008 Beijing Olympics torch.  Although we knew it would be snowing on that day, we didn’t feel cold with few clothes on due to the great passion on our magnificent significance.

Just after we got on the 9:17 train to London Bridge, the weather started roaring with a heavy snow.  On the way to London, everything was white with almost 3 cm of snow.  It was the heaviest snow I’ve ever seen in Brighton, and also in my life.  It was unambiguously an unforgettable experience to the people who have been living in South China for a long time.  So taking photos and chatting have become our ways for refreshments.

It was raining and snowing in London's China Town by the time we reached there.  But it didn’t reduce the number of enthusiastic people who were keen on seeing the event.  People were holding British, Chinese and Olympics flags, either in the rain or in the shops.

The police were already there and metal fences had been set up on two sides of the path that the torch will be passing through.  We were excitedly waiting on both sides regardless of the weather as we believed that no matter what sorts of weather we were going to encounter, the torch would be relayed successfully by the shields of the athletes.

The Art of Waiting

Posted by Sam

May I begin by welcoming those of you who have been waiting for my post for ages!  As a consequence, I would like to write about the art of waiting.

I have been spending a lot of valuable time in England waiting for things.  First of all, of course, I waited for the delayed airplane at Hong Kong International Airport.  That was merely the start.  Next, like many others I queued at Heathrow Airport for a security check. Probably it took at least an hour.

In Oxford, I am glad to say that the bus companies are very reliable and that I do not normally have to wait so long.  However, I'm sad to say I live quite a way from the city centre so I need to spend almost half an hour travelling from my home stay to Bellerbys.

The act of waiting for the end of lesson before lunch is another opportunity for the majority of student to feel the pain.  I suspect I am one of those.

As a Foundation student, the most miserable process is waiting for university offers from UCAS.  Unluckily (or I should say luckily), I am still waiting.  I am afraid I may get a wide range of mental illnesses including obsessive compulsory disorder as I log in to UCAS to check my offers at least ten times a day. It is really killing me; especially as the majority of other students sent their applications later than me and got the offers much more quickly than me.  Hopefully I will not have to wait much longer.

Finally, all of us are likely to be waiting to go back home and enjoy the summer holiday, even though you may have a summer course in a university.  I love this term more than you can imagine - it is such a short term!