Trip to Oxford , Klassen 9k und 9bil, 2007
Some comments on our trip to Oxford
Vanessa Et-Taib (9 bil)
We, i.e. form 9 k and our form (9 bil), went on a bus trip to Oxford from 16th-21st September. We spent 4 days in England, which actually seemed like a full week to us.
I personally believe it was a very good and interesting experience to gain an insight into the English way of life, though unfortunately in Malin’s, Cathrin’s and my host family life was not as typically English as I had hoped for because there weren’t any children with school uniforms and “stuff” like that.
The daily trips to Bath, London, Avebury or into Oxford were really cool, as was the fact that we had loads of free time, which we could organize and manage ourselves. The workshop at the Globe Theatre in London was a lot of fun because our guide was a good actress and she spoke so clearly and explained all the facts about the theatre in such an interesting way that it wasn’t difficult to listen to her.
I didn’t really like the guided tour through the Tate Modern because everything our guide there told us and the things she showed us were not “real art” in my point of view.
I think it was a bit surprising that we didn’t really have any problems with asking English people things like “What’s the time?” or “Excurse me, where can I find the next toilet?”. For me personally it seems much easier to speak English when I can actually talk to a real English person. You simply HAVE TO talk English then — otherwise people just won’t understand you! So it was fun to talk to them and there weren’t any problems with communication.
To sum up, going to Oxford was a good idea and we had a lot of experiences, though I would have preferred it if we had had more time for all the different things we did and if the programme had been spread out across a longer period of time.
Hanna-Tabea Volkers (9 bil)
We went to Oxford on a class trip from 16th-21st September. We stayed with host families and saw many things and places like Oxford, Bath, Avebury and ,of course, LONDON!
In my opinion, this trip did a lot for our class as a community and has strengthened it, though I’d say it would be better to maybe stay at a hotel or something similar next time and not in host families because that would be even better for our team spirit. This is especially true as I hardly spoke any more English with my host family than I do at home with my own family – except for a couple of sentences …
On the other hand it was really amazing to see all those monuments and buildings that are so famous like Big Ben or the Colleges of Oxford University. It was a very nice feeling to walk through London or travel by tube on our own and thus individually go to exactly those places that each of us wanted to see. When we were in Bath, it was also a strange, yet cool feeling to stand on the same ground that Romans had stood on 2000 years before. — The teachers were mostly nice and we had a good time with them.
So, all in all, the trip was full of positive (with only a few negative) experiences.
Malin Sauer (9 bil)
We went on a class trip to Oxford in mid-September and I’d like to tell you how I found it.
I think it was a really good and exciting trip because we did so many things together. We visited lots of sights and explored Oxford and London. I really enjoyed the workshop at the Globe Theatre. The woman who gave us a tour was very nice and it was interesting and easy to listen to her.
I liked about our trip that we had plenty of free time, so we could go round London and Oxford on our own. Our tour of Bath was very interesting, too, because we learned something about how people lived in former times. The audio tour at the Roman Baths Museum ensured that we could understand everything really well because whenever you hadn’t caught something you just pressed a button and listened to the tape once again.
Our host mum was very friendly but unfortunately her house wasn’t really what I’d call “typically British”. She gets in new pupils from abroad every week and has no children of her own. I wish that she had had children of her own wearing school uniforms. On top, it was rather smelly inside Ms Quinn’s as she smokes like a chimney! Another negative point was the food – we were only given fast food. But I don’t want to keep complaining as Ms Quinn was really nice and altogether our trip was really nice – though, admittedly, the bus journey to and from England was very long …
So all in all it was an excellent idea to go on this trip to Oxford, which turned out to be even amazing in some parts. I had lots of fun, also with our tour partners – form 9k!