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Coffee and Conversation with Saffron: Week 2

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Coffee & Conversation@EC London: Wednesday 8th July

At today’s coffee & conversation we had three students, one from France, one from Colombia and one from Switzerland. None of us had met before so we introduced ourselves and talked a little about where we are from and our lives at home.

We discussed some of the differences between the countries the students are from and London. One thing they all agreed on was that London could be overwhelming, with the traffic, people and negotiating the underground. (Overwhelming was a new word for everybody and here it means that London is very busy and can make a person feel that there is too much to take in at once.)

Two students had only been in London a relatively short time, so I asked Mauricio who has been here eight months, to suggest some places in London to visit. His recommendations were the Science and Natural History Museums in South Kensington as they have very interesting displays of animals, dinosaurs and the natural world. He also suggested visiting London’s parks like Hyde Park and taking a boat ride from Embankment to Greenwich. Greenwich is famous for it’s observatory and being the place where time is taken from, Greenwich Mean Time or GMT.

We then talked about the best things to see and do in the student’s countries. In France the best place to go was the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. The Louvre is of course famous for displaying the famous painting by Leonardo Da Vinci, the Mona Lisa.

In Switzerland, things to enjoy were the famous mountain range, the Alps, winter sports like skiing and socialising with drinks after skiing. We all agreed that this sounded like the best bit!

Our conversation moved inevitably towards food, (perhaps because it was nearing lunchtime), and the best dishes from our countries, which included fondue, a dish of hot cheese with bread to dip in, from Switzerland and ‘baisa’ from Colombia. ‘Baisa’ consists of rice, eggs, avocado, potatoes, beans, minced beef and chorizo (a kind of sausage). Having heard about some Colombian dishes last week I was glad to hear that you can try them in Colombian restaurants in the Elephant Castle area of London.

We also talked about hobbies and popular pastimes at home which led us on to the topic of homesickness, something I’m sure every student has experienced at some point during their stay in London. Our best advice to stop feeling homesick was to try and make some friends in classes and also to take advantage of the social programme at EC. It’s good to remember that everyone is in the same situation and as well as talking to fellow students, you can always talk to your teacher or the school’s advice service.

Thanks to everyone who came today and I look forward to the next session. 🙂

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