家畜旅遊空間（境外遊）

Friday, 03 August 2007

This is my last day in EF School.  The school is fine though the people here are not eager to open the windows.  The air circulation is quite bad, especially in the lecture room and in the i-Labs.

Today I had my last test.  My marks were 19/20.  Some classmates didn’t come to the class and so there were only nine of us in the photo.

Our class was a bit naughty as we always countdown for the end of the class.  Also, we packed our things right before the class ended.  For my classmates, Julius didn’t like to do the work.  He always copied my work as he found that I worked quickly.  Pavel was kind.  He always forgot to put an ‘s’ after the verb in present tense.  His voice was so low that Tim sometimes made joke on him (when Pavel was not here).  Anna and Piedad always chatted in the class.  Abdula concentrated in the class.  He has two cars and two mobile phones, which are all expensive models.

im is generous and kind but sometimes boring.  I think he can give us more games rather than exercises to make the class fun.

David taught me comprehension on Friday.  He was always depressed and thought the dark side of life.  He was bright.  He studied philosophy in Cambridge University.  He teaches 19^th – 20^th century German philosophy in a Russian university and he is also an examiner of British Council.  He came back to England in Russia’s summer holiday.  Today is his last day in EF as he will go back to Russia to teach in late September.  He always made jokes on anything in the class.  Today, when he was trying his best to use a cassette recorder, he said that the recorder was a Soviet Union product!

I packed my things in a short time and I’m ready to go home.  All in all, Manchester is a city that looks like Admiralty in Hong Kong but not so crowded.  You can see people playing music in the streets and there’s special market selling second-hand books and handcrafts.  However, this city is dirtier than Hong Kong.  I have never seen any street sweepers here.  There is a truck doing street sweeping but I don’t think it cleans the streets well.  It is even dirtier in the buses here.  You can find people putting their read newspapers and cans everywhere on the buses.  I can tell the people in Hong Kong that Hong Kong is very clean, compared with Manchester.  One thing I find it is hard to believe is that, we are always told that Western parental education is so good that we need to learn from them.  However, I saw more than once mothers here gave children crisps so that they would not cry and yell.  It’s so unhealthy!

I hope that I can come to England again when Piggy grow up.  Perhaps we will not have so many travels.  Then I can save more money for Sheepy to study and for our own saving. 

Thursday, 02 August 2007

In the morning, I went to Oxford train station and took some photos.

Today I had the last lesson of English through media.  So I took a photo with Rachael my teacher and Sara my classmate.

I received a certificate from Tim.  That means I finished my study here.  However, I still have lessons tomorrow and I will go to school. 

Wednesday, 01 August 2007

Let’s have a countdown.  I will go to EF for two more days and then I will be on the plane on this Saturday.  Hurray!

The EF language course was not bad.  I could learn more vocabularies, especially phrasal verbs and idioms.  However, the language lessons were a bit boring.  Tim can copy some language games like crossword puzzles to us, like what Rachael did today.  Rachael taught me English through media.  She gave us some warm-up questions first.  Then she gave us a crossword puzzle.  The puzzle asked us to rewrite the misprinted word in the clue into the crossword puzzle.  That was difficult but fun.  Then we were given articles from gossip magazines and we need to do a summary for it.  We needed to read out our summaries afterwards.  Rachael marked down the pronunciation mistakes we had and asked us to repeat after her one by one.  I’ll have English through media lesson again and Rachael said that she will give some activities about newspapers.

I was told that Trafford centre was a great place for shopping.  So I took a 250 bus and went there.  It was a big shopping centre.  I went to WHSmith and bought two exercise books of writing.  However most shops sold clothes and that didn’t make me interested.  There was a place called Great Wall in the shopping centre, where you can find a few Chinese and Oriental restaurant.  They called燒賣as siu mai and蝦餃 as har gau (shrimp dumpling).  For the other dim sum, they use English to call them.  The Chinese food sold in these restaurants is much more expensive than in Hong Kong.

The dinner for tonight is chicken wings and beef rice (no beef in it) cooked by me.

The TV in the student lounge went wrong for two days and today it was fixed.  I watched David Beckham’s Soccer USA when I had my dinner and Heroes, the latest popular TV drama at 9 o’clock.  It is also showing in Pearl Channel, Hong Kong.  Soccer is American English and football is British English.

Besides, there are two free newspapers in Manchester.  One is Metro and the other one is Manchester Evening News.  Both newspapers are distributed in the streets in Piccadilly.  You can also get Metro on the Stagecoach buses.  Though Manchester Evening News is named evening, you can get it from 11 o’clock in the morning.