英国，United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland，是我迄今去到过的最远的地方。我知道，它是工业革命和资产阶级革命的起源地，政体是君主立宪制，著名地标Big Ben，London Eye，有着跻身世界前列的两所学府Cambridge and Oxford。这算是我去英国之前对它的全部印象了。从上海到伦敦，便是横跨了整个亚欧大陆，从太平洋沿岸“穿越”到了大西洋沿岸。对于伦敦的最初记忆，是在飞机上鸟瞰。几乎是从心底里迸发出来的一个字，美！没有鳞次栉比的高楼，有的是大片大片规整的田和坐落在各处的大小城镇，那耀眼而迷离的璀璨真若繁星点点，任由一条条金黄色的丝线连结。黄色的许是麦田，绿些的许是种的茶，还有深紫色的，或许是植的薰衣草。如此景观，在坐了11个小时飞机后，当真令人惬意下来。
伦敦一直以来被称为雾都，现在看来这种认知已显得陈旧。伦敦的天是极好看的，云是一大朵一大朵的白，天是干干净净的蓝，坐在旅游车上，农田和蓝天白云，是宛若油画般略有氤氲的醉人色彩。都说伦敦经常下雨，所以雨伞要常备。我们便如此做了，但幸运的是，在两周的时间里，只有两天下过雨。这儿的夏天不热，平均日温二十度，早晚偏凉。在十几度的温度下，当地的staff还穿着短裤，让我们有些惊讶。英国与中国相差了八个时区，所以日出日落的时间与我们有很大区别，伦敦每天九点半左右才算是傍晚。
当然，伦敦的景色固然美，我们此行的主要目的还是交流与学习。去的夏校的名字是Felsted,坐落于伦敦的乡村，地广人稀，大部分是古朴的哥特式建筑，已有了几百年的历史，红砖，尖顶，烟囱，还有大块大块的草坪，面积占了大部分学校。
我分到的宿舍离GH（教学区）和食堂很远，在草坪的另一端，所以每天要走很远的路，但不失为一件好事，可以锻炼身体并多和人交流。因为是自然草坪，虫子比较多，类似小蜘蛛之类的，会有一些活动在草坪上进行，例如晚间游戏，瑜伽club，板球club等。相比之下，这儿的路便显得有些狭窄了，常常将广阔的草坪分成两半，但我们去食堂或者GH都是横跨过草坪，一是近，不绕路，二是走着舒服，阳光总是在脚下投映出几人成行长长的影子，很是有趣。
For the lessons in Felsted ,I want to talk about academics first.I chose the Science academics because I had heard that there would be research or experiment every lesson and that appealed to me.Our teacher was an old English lady, with white hair and a slightly wrinkled face.She looked amiability and spoke quite slowly.Science there included Chemistry,Physics and mostly Biology.The classroom was also decorated with pictures linked with these subjects(Geography included)
We had experiments such as flametest(Chemistry) ,food test(Biology),Investigating Osmosis(Biology) and Cooling Curves(Chemistry).These knowledge points were also taught in China.
However,unlike the teaching methods in China ,we didn’t know the results but we figured it out by doing the experiments and analyzed them through drawing a graph on our own.The teacher just told us what to prepare ,how to do then we would do it in groups.Though it would take a long time to do so,I found that I was better in memorizing knowledge points.Take the flame test as an example,I can definitely and confidently tell that if the first color seen is green, its mental iron is copper, and red is Lithium ,orange is Sodium ,yellow is cesuim.There were also some tasks, for example ,how to make the egg unbroken when dropping it from a two-story-high place or to test the fittest person in our group through pulse rate or to make an ice cream(cool!).Here comes the most amazing part,I did the dissection for the first time in my life!That was quite unforgettable because I only watched the dissection through video and was eager to do things like that(Biology was my favorite subject).So the task was to dissect a dead rat,and I even hadn’t seen a rat alive beforeHow I enjoyed when peeling the rat’s skin and seeing the organ inside it!Of course, there were only a few people willing to do the dissection in the class for they found it unableto bear the rat and the smell.As a saying goes’One man’s meat is anotherman’s poison.’I was a bit confused in consideration of my lack of experience and it testified to the words—’Action speaks louder than words’.Without the teacher’s demonstration, holding an scalpel and tweezers tight in hands,I started to cut. Unfortunately ,the blood was coming out soon as I was cutting it a little deeper and there should be no blood at the peeling step. Hopefully,a trainee teacher spotted this and dealt with the mess.He carefully did the demonstration to peel the skin off a bit and allowed me to try more with the peeling. We had been warned before the dissection that if we accidentally broke any organ inside the dead rat ,it could give out a more terrible smell.Therefore,I decided not to be careless and focused my concentration on the next step—dividing the organs. Nobody said it was easy and it was actually not.The organs seemed to mix up together for the rat was quite small and so did its organs.Fortunately,I managed to cut the tiny protection coating of the upper body which contained its heart and lungs.Then I could easily tell where the heart was.It was much smaller than I imagined ,about twice the size of a M&M and was soft enough to touch.The teacher walked by and patiently helped me
to recognize the lower part of the body which contained its liver ,intestines and stomach.I couldn’t wait to finish disemboweling and perfectly I took all the organs completely out.I really felt proud and pleasant when seeing the organs placed nicely on my operating desk without damaging .
Besides the Science academics ,there were three English classes in the morning.For the main two classesI was sorted to the Luwis ’s class according to an easy test.Luwis had a very standard London accent and as he said he was born in northern Scotland .He didn’t want us to call him
‘teacher ‘ but ‘luwis ‘.I have to mention that even he was not young,he wasquite handsome,especially for his eyes,sometimes they were green, sometimes blue,but always deep.Luwis spoke fluently and quickly,so it was difficult for me to catch up with him at first.He was the drama teacher in Felsted,so he focused on some typical skills such as debate,doing presentations,which were my weaknesses because they needed to speak a
lot.Also,during the teaching period,I learnt a lot about vocabulary instead of grammar.He didn’t explain it himself but allowed students to guess according to the context.He is really good at inspiring us to think more
and speak more.As I was a little bit shy,he sometimes threw the questions to me and told me nit to be afraid of making mistakes because it’s how I learned.Here was a fun fact about him.He would never say something disturbed or discouraged you.No matter how you behaved,once you tried, he would say ‘excellent ‘’good ‘’really nice ‘,etc .Even if I got stuck when debating,he would encourage me by these words and I really appreciate that.Also,the teaching atmosphere was quite relaxing.We had only seventeen people in a large room so he always changed how we sat by changing the chairs into a circle or in pairs ,which meant you could always find someone new to work with.There were six nations in all in our class , China,Argentina ,Germany,Thailand ,Italy and of course England included.So it was the first chance and a great time for me to get along with different people and various culture.Also having noticed this,Luwis made us separate into groups of two to make a presentation about one country.I started the group with an Italian girl,Virginia.once mentioned her name,the other boys would sing ‘West Virginia,Mountain Mama’.We did the presentation of Germany by searching the information in Google including typical plates, landmarks,national flags,slangs and capital city.When it happened to be German words,the only German boy Lars would help us to pronounce and explain them to us.It was quite kind of him and in the meantime,two Argentina girls kept asking me and Yifan Chinese slangs.
During the whole Presentation period,I noticed the differences and lots of fun facts about different countries.
For example,most of us will prevent from eating late in the evening because we believe that it’s not good for digesting.But in Argentina,they had their dinner in 10 p.m.!They do have food to stay from hunger in the afternoon but it is just a little bit.Maybe in China,only the people who want to have Barbecue or midnight snacks will have dinner that late.Perhaps that could explain why at 10 p.m. in the evening,mostly girls in the kitchen of our house are Argentina,they had bread with jam,chocolate,cakes and a cuo of coffee or milk with coco crops on their hands.Since mentioning the kitchen,I had to say that each night I was one of them as well because I would have a glass of milk from the fridge with the coco crops sometimes add some strawberry jam(coco crops was palatable).
About Thailand,they say people there always wear a smile.No offense,but I definitely agree with that .Take Jetai (a Thai boy)asan example,he smiled more often than anyone else in the class,even when he talked,he smiled and laughed so it gave us a feeling of welcome and energetic.As for Italians, they are infamous for being not punctual.This fun fact functioned on an
Italian boy called Marco.It seemed that he was late for class every morningand always be the last one to finish his meals.Truthfully,I spotted his behaviors for some time,he chatted a lot during meals but he finished his meal not a little late.He continued chatting on the table and waited for the exact time to come to the assembly.He had the ability to be punctual but he was just lack of the sense of time.When the girls speaking of China’s fun facts,they prior announced that all the information was from Google, not their personal view.’They wear glasses ‘(I couldn’t defend myself for this,haha ‘They are good at Maths ‘(a round of applause), ‘China is a dirty country’Whenhearing this,we two Chinese girls found it uncomfortable and my friendstood up to clarify the present China’s environment.No one would willingly see his country being misunderstood but
the circumstances made me think .China was once indeed a dirty country with lots of pollution but now we are trying to improve it and I believe that the world will see our achievements in greening the environment in the near\future.We China also have a really distinguished feature—our population.When hearing that we have 50students in a class,the other students were not obliged to hide their astonishment because they only had 20 students in a class in their country.Our class had a slang,too,which was’Mamma Mia ‘,an Italian word meant ‘What’s up ‘.In one of the classes,we did a competit-ion which involved in the films we had seen.The teacher broadcast a video and let us write down the names of appearing films and the characters’ names on the scream in groups.Fortunately,I was with Marco andLars both of them had great knowledge about films (so did I).And our team name was ‘Mamma Mia ‘There were many rounds included science fiction,romance,adventure ,western......Surprisingly, in the historic films area,Iwas the only one in class who distinguished the film Schindler’s List among the flashed pictures and the teacher praised me for that.But the truth is I have never seen that film.It was because its background music was our final exam for Music the last term and it impressed me a lot. Through this experience,I realized all we learnt might be of use at sometime we wouldn’t know.And it’s important to broaden our range of knowledge and life was always full of knowledge if we really paid attentio to it.
Felsted 特别重视我们的团队合作能力，基本上每晚都要有一个game time或是houseshout。我的house是Garnetts，一个比较老的学生宿舍，但在我看来，却是布置最温馨的。虽然不比新建的宿舍空间大，设施多，甚至于洗澡也要抢位置，但每次从寒冷的室外进入了休息室，感受到突然的温暖，还有暗黄色的灯光，总给人一种归属感。休息室的四周都是国旗，墙上还有“欢迎”标语，且是用各个国家的语言制作了若干标语贴在墙上。身处异国，看到自己国家的语言便会倍感亲切。
我们的house staff有三四个，如同我们的朋友，而且很关心我们，记得有一次跟她说我的睡衣没有洗好，她便主动提出帮我找了一件大号的蓝T当作睡衣，她说过，我们有什么问题就去找她，她会想办法。鉴于我们宿舍是由来自各个国家的人组成的，一个印度的小妹妹还利用了晚上向我们宿舍展示了印度的舞蹈，是与现代舞完全不同的风格，而且带着浓重的印度色彩，那歌韵律十足，听上去大多以鼓声为基础，是纯天然的歌曲。她穿的也是印度的传统服饰，舞姿灵活但是充满了力道。Game time是一定要说一下的。在这里，我体验到了躲避球游戏，板球运动，足球等等。
这些对我而言都是新鲜的体验，且是充满运动性的。边玩边锻炼身体还顺带提高英语理解能力。甚至于还有一些来自中国的游戏，击鼓传花，传声筒（王牌对王牌上的经典游戏），丢手绢。这些游戏都不是单独上阵，而是要以一个团队的形式，并且是由老师随机分配，一个团队里最大的17岁最小的可能才10岁，会有来自欧洲，亚洲的各国人，而大家都用英语交流沟通，形成一个整体。我的队伍就在一次游戏知识竞赛中获胜，队伍里的每个人都用心地参与每一个知识游戏，有我擅长的项目，拼接词汇，猜词，也有我不擅长的项目，例如填写欧洲板块的国家和首都。正是这样，通过游戏，我也学习到了了许多知识和词汇，比如挪威在哪儿，小美人鱼雕像是在哪个城市，权力的游戏的作者是谁，名人小的时候的照片是什么样子等等。或许这些与考试是无关的，但却是我基本知识的一个提升，丰富了我的阅历，让我不局限于我周围的世界，而是放眼于我脚下的大世界！
One thing I have to mention is the disco on each Saturday evening.It may sound crazy because it is kind of forbidden home.So it was my first time to taste the burning dancing atmosphere and I couldn’t help loving that .Once getting on the dance floor,It was hot with so many boys and girls crowded.To dance or just shake the body to the rhythmic DJ music.I had to illustrate that girls from Argentina were always dazzling since they all had a good body shape and enthusiasm as well.Nobody felt weird in the room,I thought.It was really relaxing and a bit tiring if you joined it for a long time .The room was dark enough not to see one’s face clearly but the LED stage lighting ball kept glistening and the colorful light Flashed on and off,up and down,left and right like going mad!
英国的纪律很严，首先是交通方面，道路较窄，大多两车道。staff对我们过马路管得很严，即便在看不到车的情况下还是会有几个staff围出一条供我们走的“斑马线”，然后让我们迅速通过。即便上science课的实验楼就在对面，带队老师也要把我们带到远处的斑马线绕上一圈。英国乡村的车流量极少，可还是让staff高度警惕着。在学院里，我们都必须带着lanyard，而且不允许独自外出，要有staff陪伴。有一次早晨还进行了逃生演练，还没到七点，火灾的闹铃急促地响起来，我算是被惊醒的，门外已有脚步声，那次的演练是没有预先经过通知的，而我只好在睡裙外面穿上外套，套着拖鞋便奔出去。早晨太阳已经升起，阳光很是明媚，但还是很冷，有些人看的出来是裹了件浴巾出来的，头发还是湿的。当地的校长是很重视这些安全措施的。
学习之余，总是少不了欢乐的远足与游戏。第一周的周三去的是伦敦，登上了伦敦眼，并且去了British Museum（时间有点短）。
第二周是我所期待的剑桥之旅。剑桥是世界闻名的学校，而此行之后，我更是对剑桥有了更深层的理解，它不仅是一所大学，更是一座艺术的殿堂，也是我未来所要努力的方向。剑桥同时是一座城市的名字，走在街上，两旁是标准的哥特式建筑，充满了文化的气息。
国王学院和教堂我们只是在外面看了一眼。
但女王学院我们却是实实在在地踏进去了解了一番。解说的是一位上了年纪的英国老奶奶，她说这些大大小小的学院起初都是一块块的正方形封闭的建筑。进了女王学院的大门，两块大而平整光亮的草坪映入眼帘，四周是两层楼的古老而庄雅的学生宿舍。
屋顶的坡度很大，据她说，下雨天雨水从屋檐边滑落如喷泉的样子煞是好看。顺着路往前，是学生用餐的地方，有着教堂般神秘的装饰。乍看一眼，还以为是置身于哈利波特世界里的古堡，只是隔着一堵栅栏。老奶奶说，这个餐厅现在还用着，只是学生都放假了，所以不开放。教师坐在最前面的稍高一点的台子上，学生坐在底下的长桌用餐，高处是校长站的地方，在那儿可以将底下的情况一览无余。那时便在想，究竟是怎样的精英才有资格每天坐在那里咀嚼，坐在里面又是一番怎样的体验。
路上，老奶奶又向我们介绍了英国的酒吧文化。而剑桥有一个著名的酒吧叫Eagle。我们随着她走了进去，天花板上画着各种的符号，还有一个女孩的尸体。
而墙上放的照片中，有一张竟是沃森和克里克在这儿研究DNA结构的照片。不得不感慨，在剑桥这座美丽古朴的城市，连酒吧都是如此古老而神秘。
路上，我们还看到了克文迪许实验室，这在我们物理的教科书上是提到过的，也引起了我们的赞叹。虽说是实验室，但那模样俨然是一座白色的堡垒。换句话说，剑桥的建筑是颜值与内涵双在线的艺术作品 。在周日的下午活动中，我们第一周去的是英国的海边，令我印象最深的便是那边的海鸥，成群地低飞，极为自然。
第二周周六去的是动物园，有一些动物是在中国很少见到的，例如食蚁兽，科莫多巨蜥等等。并且这里的动物所生存的环境都是根据自然环境模拟出来的，具备完整的一套循环体系。
On the day before our leaving,it happened to be the Friend’s Day in Argentina.As there were so many Argentinas,it soon became a hugging day for us all for most of us would set out for home the next day.We just hugged our friends and said goodbye word.During the class break that day,we didn’t play table tennis or focus on our phone as usual.we just stood up and hugged our friends and danced to the music.I had to say that the atmosphere was so moving that some of the girls started to chok or cry.Hug really gave us comfort.I came to the friends I made in Felsted,two Emiliy(one from Taiwan,China ,one from Germany),Marco(a handsome Italian boy in Luwis’s class),Virginia,Ana,Madelina(my classmates),Lars(a humorous German boy) and so on.
The fact was that we were from different countries and once we left,we might never see each other again for the rest of our life. We also started to sign our names on other’s Felsted notebook.I have got about 30 signatures so far,including my classmates,my teachers and my roommates.I was reluctant to leave because I had a perfect time to study here,play here and stay here. Looking back to the period of 14 days in Felsted ,I considered it as a gift to me.I learnt all the time during the stay.I learnt to appreciate other’s culture and respect people from different parts of the world.I learnt to make friends with people and I was quite shy at the beginning.I learned about other’s opinions on China and corrected their misunderstandings ,in the meantime,spread our culture .I learnt the importance of teamwork,which was of help to the task and I tried to make my ideas aloud in the discussion.I learnt to be fearless to make mistakes because everyone does that and that is the way to success.I learnt a lot about common skills.I learnt some specialized knowledge on Biology.I srengthened my vocabulary storage.I learnt to delve in instead of being satisfied with the answer when doing a research or an experiment.I learnt to ask for help instead of caging myself in.As I had been a shy girl before,the stay in Felsted changed me a lot and made me realize that it was not that difficult.
Thanks for everything.
Still miss the people,the dishes in Felsted.
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