Posted by Ksenia
On Monday and Tuesday (15th & 16th December), the Foundation students finished their exams (these lucky people can feel totally relaxed now – I am even a bit jealous). Less and less students have been attending the college and everyone has suddenly started packing and having 'goodbye’ parties. Being in an almost empty college is quite a strange feeling – however student life was still going on and some places were still very crowded – like the IT suites in the library where I could see lots of my friends printing tons of paper for their holiday revision.
During some lessons we continued to do past papers (not very enthusiastically, as we have done plenty of them already and I had some to take back home – practice makes perfect!) while during the others we just had a great chat with our teachers and classmates, learning new thing about each other. On the last chemistry lesson we were taking pictures and watching one part of “Doctor Who” especially selected for us by Mr. Loft (who said that it has no connection with Science? You just have to watch it more carefully!).
On Friday I went out with my Chinese classmates to have a lunch in “Good friends” – probably the best Chinese restaurant in Brighton. Even though I was the only person who could not speak Chinese everybody was talking in English (which was pretty nice to me and helped everybody to practice their speaking!). The meal was fantastic – so many delicious dishes whose names I cannot pronounce and won’t even try (my Chinese friends were not sure about the English equivalent, however I was constantly asking them to explain me what is the food that I am eating, which was really tricky for them and absolutely fascinating for me. Sometimes our conversation had to be finished by “just try it!” which was probably the best option).
As I was writing before, on Wednesday the 14th I went to an open-day in Bristol. It’s quite a long way from Brighton – four hours on train so I had to get up really early if I wanted to be there a t 11 o’clock. I took a bus from the station which took me to the university (I was so scared to miss the right stop – after Brighton Bristol seemed to be a very big city and I had no idea at all were I was). The university itself is very big as well so I had some troubles finding the right building - at first I tried to follow the map but then I realized that I am getting late (no surprises here!) so I decided to use my favorite method of finding things out – to ask people around me questions. It was definitely the right thing to do as I was just on time to listen for an introductory talk by the admission tutor and go for a coach tour to the residence halls.
The University itself is perfectly located right in the center of the city but the halls are quite far away – at least 30 minutes on bus. There are lots of them in one area where the majority of the students live. We visited one of the halls, and were shown around. Then we went back to the University to have a lunch (which reminded me of the Bellerbys canteen) and several other talks by students and members of staff.
After four o’clock we were all free to go, however I was afraid that I won’t find the bus stop so I joined one of the boys who I met that day. It wasn’t as easy as we thought though, so at the end it took us about an hour to arrive at the station. Nevertheless we had a very nice walk around the city and I realized that I like it very much. The huge number of shops, cafes, people on the streets and Christmas decorations created a very pleasant and vibrant atmosphere. Due to some unknown reasons there were a lot of delays in the rail service so I was back to Brighton only at around 10 o’clock. Anyway it was a very nice day out even though I don’t think that Bristol University is a perfect place for me.
Saturday the 13th of December was my time to go back to Moscow. Three months in Bellerbys have passed very quickly as usual but I am sure that three weeks of holidays will go by even faster, especially because straight after them I will have my exams (something that I am not really looking forward in the next year, but I am sure that the pleasure to see everyone in the college again will balance that). I will try to study at least a bit and obviously have lots of fun))) You too, have a great time!