My holidays in Derry

Hi to everyone! I have passed my holidays in Derry (Northern Ireland) because I've requested a grant for studying English in a foreign country during 3 weeks. Unfortunately, I didn't learn too much English because all the people in the residence where I lived where spanish people, so Andrea I'm so sorry if I commit a lot of mistakes in this post.

I really enjoyed my time in Derry and I would like to come back in the future. I met a lot of nice friends and we went to many places together.

When I arrived to Ireland the first thing which surprised me was that all the landscape was surrounded by grass, irish people called this scenery as “greenery”.

The first day in Derry the director of the school told us that we had to be there everyday at 9:30 sharp, but we always went out at night and sometimes we went to school with hangover. Moreover, this day we had to do an exam to probe our English level and I did it very well! I was in the level Advanced II which was the second best level after Advanced III.

The rest of the days we have to wake up early to go to classes, we ate at school and in the afternoon the have something programmed for us, like going to some place to play pool, orienteering in the city, some parties (including a fancy dress party), play sports (I played sumo wrestling... ¬¬), etc. And we also went shopping in the afternoon for food or souvenirs.

After several days going out at night we had to rest because we were too tired so some days we took a “siesta” instead of going to the prepared activities.

On Thrusdays we went to dance Salsa in a pub (but it wasn’t Salsa, it was only Spanish music).
On Fridays we also had workshops which were compulsory and you had to be fast to choose the workshop you wanted to do. There was a choir, gaelic football, theatre… but I always arrived late so I chose some boring workshops.

And some day we visited the murals in Derry about terrorism and we learnt a lot of things especially about the Bloody Sunday, the IRA, the troubles with London and between catholics and protestants.

A monument in memory of the Bloody Sunday

On Saturdays we made some excursions to a castle, a national park, the Giant Causeway (some stones which are supossed to be created by a giant as it says a legend) and Belfast.

And that’s all, at the beginning we went out to some Irish Pubs where we could listen to groups in live and drink a lot of Guinness beers, but in the end we went to some discos and we have serveral parties in the residence.

Me and some friends in the fancy dress party

The weather was very strange, in a day we have sun, clouds and rain, but especially clouds. And that’s all, if you have respect to all the people, the city is not very dangerous and I recommend to everybody to go there.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE THIS SUMMER?

I invite you to post a photo of your holiday and tell your classmates about it. I promise to write comments with the corrections so that you can improve your writing.
It's as simple as follows:

So far I haven't done much in Summer. I have just had a brief trip with some friends to one amazing Galician beach, Valdoviño. It was like a short visit to paradise!But I will be travelling soon to some other place. Destination: It is still to be decided, I'll let you know with a photograph as soon as I come back.

CLASSROOM VIDEOS

Here you have a good oportunity to review some of the videos we have worked with throughout the year. Watch them and try to do the related activities again. It's a good way of not losing and improving your listening skills