MY EXPERIENCE AS AN INTERN IN TOTNES

INTRODUCTION

My name is Kevin, I am 18 years old and I’m a work experience student at English in Totnes for 6 months. I have been here the 20th August and I’m staying here until the 18th February. During my time here, I’m staying with a host family which you can basically imagine like your own family. You have your own room and eat together with them.

I came here in a group of 11 from Darmstadt in Germany within the Erasmus+ project that gives students the possibilities to do a work experience in either England, Ireland, Spain or France.

For the first two weeks I had lessons at the school itself and after that I started my work placement. Within that I was for 3 weeks at Scope, a clothing shop and charity organisation in Totnes, and after that I began my placement at English in Totnes.

The purpose of this blog is to give future students an impression of what it’s like to stay in another country for such a long time, to work and live in a foreign country and what you can do here in your free time. As I’m writing this I’m here for about 2 months and I’m going to update that blog every other week.

Me and some friends on a walk to Sharpham

THE TIME AT THE SCHOOL

As you are reading this I’m sure you’re most likely interested about what we’re doing here. So, our normal schedule started at 8:45 in the morning and finishes at 12:00 or 14:00 depending on whether you have the intensive class in the afternoon or nor. In between the lessons you have a break of 15 minutes at 10:15 and half an hour of lunch at 12:00.

On our first day we had to do a language test to see whether we would go to the intermediate or the advanced class. My group was split for the morning lessons as everyone has a different level but for the afternoon we were all in the same class. In the lessons we did different kinds of tasks. It was very important for us to speak a lot of English as most of us didn’t really learn that at school. Therefore, we had to do some presentation and furthermore we had to go out and have interviews with random people on the street or in shops.

Outside the lessons the school offers various trips or activities we did. They do things like the study club or similar activities you do at the school or trips to nice places in Devon. We went to Torquay one day where we visited Kents Cavern. Fortunately, everyone in our group is over eighteen so could stay there for the rest of the day. In the evening we’ve been at a nice place called Burgerfest, which is a Burger restaurant in retro style. They even have a kicker, pool table and an N64 so it’s definitely worth eating then when you’re in Torquay. Another great activity we did was the trip to the Bigbury Beach. You have an astonishing view over the sea. We were really lucky with the weather, so we went surfing.

The time at the school was very nice and I am very grateful to get the possibility to study in a foreign country.