2015 - KSB @ Bourne Academy

20 students from Kantonsschule Beromünster spent their project week in the Bournemouth area to get to know people and places. They attended classes at Bourne Academy and were put up with host families in Bournemouth.
On Friday the students also met the representatives of the Bournemouth Twinning Association. The following diary entries give an insight into the fine experience the students had.

Sunday 11th October 2015

We started off to our trip to Bournemouth at the airport in Basel at 10 am. Mr. Pfäffli and Mr. Galliker, our teachers, welcomed us very friendly. We were very excited and some of us were going to fly for the first time in their lives. The plane left on time, the flight was nice and smooth and at Heathrow we were given a very warm welcome by Helen Herridge, who had organized our accomodation and our lessons for the coming week at Bourne Academy. On the way to Bournemouth we saw the typical English landscape. There were a lot of brick terraced houses and when we got to the New Forest area we were excited to see the freely roaming ponies. We were happy to meet our very friendly host families. After being shown the house we were first given the traditional cup of tea. Later on we had a lovely Sunday dinner and talked a lot of English with our families. We then went to bed happy since it had been a long day and we had experienced a lot of new and interesting things.

Monday 12th October

We made it! After being welcomed by the headmistress at Bourne Academy we all got our buddies who were going to be with us during lessons and supervised study periods. Some had six lessons that day, others had up to four supervised study periods along with two lesson only. That is something we do not know in our school system, but it was quite useful because it helped us to make friends with our buddies. They were all very nice to us. The students specialize in three subjects (media, maths, arts, psychology, product design, engineering and many other interesting subjects). For lunch we all had our packed lunches. Yummy! After another two lessons in the afternoon (one lesson is an hour long) we were taken home on Happy Bus J. We spent the evening with our host families. Some of them took their students down to an exciting walk on the beach, others were talking about Switzerland and England while having the typical British cup of tea.

Tuesday 13th October

After assembly at 8.45 lessons started again. It was a challenge for all of us again to understand the texts we were given in detail, but we thought the lessons were very interesting (eg. we discussed ethical questions in psychology although it was hard to find the right words).

At four in the afternoon we were taken to the beach. It was beautiful there and we took a lot of pictures. We were then explained the rules of Rugby, put into two teams and we had a lot of fun playing against the other team. It was quite exhausting though, so we enjoyed playing Rounders, another English game. It is similar to Baseball, but players use shorter bats. After the games we went back to the beach again and took some funny group photos. We found some shells and impressive stones to take home.

Wednesday 14th October

As usual we were picked up at 7.15 to go to school. We met our buddies for the first lesson and had lessons till one thirty. Helen, her husband and our teachers picked us up with the minibusses and took us to Bournemouth. We were given two hours to do our shopping. Some came back with bags full of new clothes, others had just gone to a café for a cup of tea. We then headed to AFC Bournemouth football stadium. We were shown the changing rooms (equipped with an ice bath and luxurious boxes for the home team, totally uncomfortable facilities for the away team J), the boxes for the interviews and the ground.

It was very intersting, we even met a player of the Premier League team. After a stop at the supermarket to buy food to take home we were driven back home to our host families

Thursday 15th October

First thing on Thursday morning we met up with our buddies and went to lesson. Our buddies are all from the 6^th form, the college grade here at Bourne University. Most schools do not have a college, so when the students are done with secondary school they have to go to college in another school. Because of the wide age range it feels a lot like our school, the KSB. Everybody knows each other. We stayed near the sixth form common room during lunch. After another lesson we headed back to our minibuses and went rock climbing. We got to a big hall with climbing walls. After a game of tag we were instructed and were able to test our climbing skills. Two hours later we drove home.

Friday 16th October

We had another set of highly interesting lessons in the morning (composing part of a score for a play by Shakespeare/learning about Camp America – a company that gets you a job as a camp counselor in a summer camp). In the afternoon some students of ours gave a presentation about Lucerne to our buddies and to members of the Twinning Association in Bournemouth. We were then handed over a certificate each. After that we had Cream Tea (tea with scones, whipped cream and jam) – it was pretty good. We were talking to our buddies, exchanged phone numbers and other contact information, took some group photos and then we said farewell and left Bourne Academy.

Saturday 17th October

It was our great day out that day. First we crossed the ferry on our two mini busses (Party Bus and Happy Bus) from Poole to Studland National Reserve where we spent an hour on the beach. We had just arrived there after sunrise, so it looked really beautiful. After that we drove on to Swanage, a nice little town. There we had about an hour to do souvenir shopping or go to a nice little Café. Then we watched a steam train departing and took a group picture. We were then taken to Corfe Castle where we had lunch. It was a great viewpoint. After that we drove to Durdle Door. Walking down to the cove we enjoyed the beautiful scenery. After driving back to Bournemouth for the evening meal in a pub, we played at skittles. We all had a lot of fun this day and it was a perfect closure of this great week in England.

Sunday 18th October

It was time to say goodbye to our host families at five in the morning! We then drove to Heathrow Airport. Now we are sitting on the airplane and we're all very tired. But we are looking back to a great week. Everyone had an amazing host family and had interesting conversations with them. We met also many people at school and made friends with them. We'll really miss them. We benefitted from many things during this week. We improved our English and now we like this language more. We learned a lot about the English way of life. It was a very experience. We would have loved to stay longer and we definitely want to come back again. Now we are landing in Basel and our families are waiting for us. We have a lot to tell and can't wait to do that.

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