CAMBRIDGE: Arrival and Day 1

Here I am, attending a refresher course aimed at practising teachers of English at Bell Teacher Campus in Cambridge based at Homerton College and only a 30-minute walk into the city centre!

This was the first picture I took on Sunday as soon as we arrived: beautiful buildings in secluded wooded grounds and incredible lawns with squirrels. Absolutely lovely!!!

After the first impact, our group was guided into our single en-suite bedrooms. Here is another picture, this time, of my own room: “student residential accommodation, not hotel accommodation” as Jim Scrivener so well put it.

At 7pm all participants gathered for a warm welcome reception at a bar called Nusha and it included drinks, cold buffet supper, music and chatting. It was really nice for a first contact with other participants, teachers like ourselves, who had just arrived from 16 different countries. Wow! Amazing, isn’t it? 16 different nationalities from faraway places such as Japan at Bell Teacher Campus.

Monday was our first course day and it was fantastic: breakfast at around 8 am in a gorgeous Harry Potter-style dining hall, and classes from 9am to 12.30 and then from 2pm up to 3.30. After that, off to the city centre to be back at 6pm for dinner (served from 5.30 to 7pm) also because there was a general meeting at 7.30. Hard work, folks, yes, but loads of fun and many opportunities to socialize.

                A picture of my first dinner here in Cambridge at the campus - Yummy!


Many, many thanks to PROALV and to our APPI colleagues, mainly to Manuela, who, in different ways, have made all this possible.