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Monday 11th July
It is the first school day in Felsted. To be honest, it is really exciting. Among all the activities, what impressed me most was math. It is fantastic to learn about Game Theory! Math is very interesting and I want to know more abort Game Theory which excites me most. I am looking forward to tomorrow math class. Rambling is nice as well. It is pleasant to go sightseeing in the countryside. I wonder why England does not plant rice while it has a lot of rain water. There will be more things for me to experience.
Tuesday 12th July
Today was another busy day. We learnt to make our own menu with people from other countries, an international menu! It is a pity that my group did not have enough time to make a presentation.(we will do it later) The sudden rain made me a little annoyed because I left my umbrella in the dormitory. The weather in the UK is quite different from that in China, but I may get used to it soon. Rambling was funny but tiring. We walked a long distance, but the view of the countryside was perfect. The sky was pure blue and the clouds were moving quickly. The air was fresh while the road was dirty because of the rain.
Wednesday 13th July
Today we got a chance to have an excursion. We went to THOPRE PARK. It is a really big theme park! We spent nearly 5 hours in the park and had great fun. The park is full of people which shows how popular the rollercoaster is. I played in the games hall instead. I found a game I am really good at. I broke the record and got 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th place on the that game Another boy who stood beside me was shocked and said ‘Why are you so good at it?’ I used 850 tickets which I won from the game to exchange them for a nice remote control car. I am looking forward to another excursion.
Thursday 14th July
In the English class, we finished our presentation of the international food menu. I believe Chinese food delicious, but few people voted for it.I think the real food would be more persuasive. The talking was my favorite activity. I think it would make relationships between us, who are from different countries closer. We did paintball in the evening. I was only shot on my right hand without protection, but I think it was really fun. However, we paid 20 pounds for each one, so I think we should have played a little longer.
Friday 15th July
Today is an exciting day. I have learnt more about calculus in math class and I believe I will learn more about it. Instead of sports, I went to a horse riding lesson today. It was very nice. I enjoyed it a lot! I once rode a horse in China. It is good to be on the back of a horse, up and down with the pace of the horse! I rode the horse for only half an hour. I really want to ride more in the next week.
Saturday 16th July
After having English lessons in the morning, We went to Regent Street in London for shopping. Honestly, Regent Street is not very big, but our time was also very limited. We could only shop for two hours. We did not spend too much time in clothes shops which are everywhere in Regent Street. Instead, we bought some chocolate first. Then we rushed into a game shop called Hamleys. That was like heaven for me. There are plenty of games. I bought the lord of the rings for 50 pounds. I think it was fantastic. I regretted not buying more things at that time.
Sunday 17th July
This morning, we had a project lesson. We needed to protect a water balloon when it dropped from the second floor. We used the wrong method so we failed. I thought we would have succeeded if we had changed the way we did it. But teamwork is more important. We have to make up name, logo and song of our team. It is great fun. In the afternoon, we went to Cambridge. We had enjoyed a great time on the boat. The sights from the water are very beautiful. I bought some nice post cards there. I think they are good presents to give them to my friends when back to China.
After living in Felsted International Summer School for 15 days, I have learnt a lot of things, so I have some deep thoughts about it.
I really enjoy the life there which is quite from that in China. There is a lot of happy things during the stay in Felsted which I have mentioned in my diaries. We mostly have lessons on English, but I learnt something beyond class knowledge. What impressed me most was the obvious cultural differences which were everywhere in the life.
Firstly, food, honestly, is not as good as that in China which I have been used to. The most famous English food was Fish and Chips. It was good as the taste of the fish was very nice. However, there was still something that I do not like to eat. For instance, I hardly have cheese in China, so I was not used to the taste of cheese.
Secondly, I found that Chinese students might be quiet during the break. We might be playing on the phone or just sleep in the sofa while the students from western countries were more active and they were always playing sports, talking and laughing. Though there was still some students from western countries also liked sitting in the sofa with their phones, most of them looked more energetic. They liked to play tricks on others, speak loudly, run after each other and so on. In our opinion, they were naughty. We are told to be quiet during the break in China, not to disturb other students while they might be doing their homework.
Thirdly, our value is quite different from the people in westerncountries. At some nights, we would have a disco party, which meant that everyone would dance together with the pace of the loud music that is loud enough to wake up the dead. From our eyes, a good student should not have a disco party. Only bad students will have a party crazily. However, in the party, you would find most people were dancing happily, jumping up and down. What made me more surprised was most of them were just 13, 14 or 15 years old. In another word, they were just junior school students. We were not very used to that mostly because we had never had a party like that. After having the party for the time, some Chinese students tried to act like most people, dancing with their foreign friends whatever gender was. I think that they had experienced the cultural difference.However, I still could find someone from different countries did not like the disco party who just sat on the chair watching the crowd. Someone even played games on their phones during the disco party. I talked to a teenager from Italy who told me that they had place for students to have a disco party like that, so they were familiar to it. It sounds crazy in China because it is against the law to some extent. People who are under 18 years old are forbidden to get into a disco. That is why the disco party impressed me a lot. What is more, there was a couple of lovers in school. Nobody tried to stop them. Even staffs in school sometimes helped them to have a better relationship with each other. That is also a little different in China. People’s minds from western countries were more open.
I think it was good to experience the differences between countries. It was they that gave me practical knowledge beyond the class. They caused me to have deep thoughts about the cultural differences. We should respect other different cultures. As the old saying goes: ’When in Rome, do as a Roman do.’ On one hand, we also should learn from other cultures which may have something that we exactly need to improve our own culture. On the other, we should leave out the useless things in it and keep it away from ours.That is the correct attitude to the cultural difference.
Moreover, the UK is also very beautiful. When we were walking in the street in London, we found that London is a very modern city while it has some historic tourist attractions. During the shopping, we found an interesting fact that food and drinks in the street are more expensive than those in China while goods like clothes, sports shoes or luxury bags are cheaper sometimes. For example, Dream Dragon is a famous grand for ice cream. In China, it is only 6 yuan for one while it is 3 pounds which nearly equals to 26 yuan in the UK. That is really surprising. However, shoes which were still made in PRC in Nike would be several hundred yuan cheaper than those in China. As a game lover, I was always looking for the game shop. There seemed to be more game shops in the UK because wherever we went, I could find a shop selling all kinds of things about games. To tell the truth, when I stepped into a game shop, I was seemed to be in the heaven.XBOX games, PS games, Steam games for PC were everywhere. Most of them were famous or latest ones. ‘Rise of The Tomb Raider’‘Dark Soul 3’‘Battlefield 1’‘Minecraft’‘Total War: War Hammer’. I really wanted to get all of them, but I do not have so much money. There were some toys on games as well. I bought a light in the model of red stone in the Minecraft. I love the game shop very much. It seems that people all over the world like playing video games and it also provides a chance to make friends with others who from foreign countries regardless of the different language because the game we played is the same. In Felsted School, I found a lot of people liked playing Heartstone, Overwatch or some other famous games. It made a talk between them and me. A boy from France called Paco liked playing Heartstone very much, so I always watched him playing on his phone. He was good at the game but he did not have the luck, so he often lost the game. It is really funny to watch him shouting to the screen of the phone and we sometimes shared the idea of the games. I was glad to have such a topic with foreigners. I even helped a boy from Argentina with his question about his PC. He wanted to play Overwatch but his PC could not run the game. I told him that he had to changed his 32-bit system into 64-bit system to run the game and the RAM of his PC had to be at least 4GB.
Last but not the least, after I experienced 2 weeks in the UK, I thought that my life skills improved a lot. It seems that my life is well-planned now. To make the best use of the time, I made a lot of plans on my daily life. I mostly achieved them by my hard effort and it is good to be independent from the care of our parents. Without parents’ care, we might make some mistakes, but we could improve ourselves from them after taking a deep thought of the mistakes.
When I looked back on my days in the UK, I found joy, happiness, persistence and success. Igenuinely want to keep that sweet memory in my mind forever.
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