Lectures and assessments

As I wrote in my Business courses article, I have to follow 3 modules. Actually the courses are only lectures where the teacher speaks for 3 hours about a subject. There are some interactions sometimes but it is completly different from my courses in ESDES, my French school in Lyon. Indeed, in ESDES, teachers provide very attractive courses, with exercises to do and attractive "Power point" with a lot of colours, a plan well explained...

Here, the power points are just few words written, not colours, and sometimes not explicite plan on them. So sometimes I feel lost. in addition to it I have to concentrate in order to understand what the teacher is saying. It is another method to learn! But interesting to follow.

About the assessement method, I have to write several reports, one essay and I have a final exam in Researching the Marketing environment.

All the assessments are individual, which is also different from my original school. Sometimes I have to write 1500 words or 2500 about a specific topic. So we have to do a lot of reasearch, to read many of books.

I think the learning method here is more theorical than in my Business school.

Food and drink

I miss French food!!

Actually, it is very interesting to see what English people eat! Because they mix some ingredients I have never imagine to mix. For example, some students in the University mix chips and cheese 0o. I have not tried yet, and I don't think I will not try it ^^

They like eating jelly with pieces of fruit in it. I tasted it, I didn't like it.

In the canteen, there is always chips, vegetables are few and not emphasized. Their sausage are not sausage actually, it is more fat than ours in France, but the taste is ok.  

As I must share the kitchen with 11 other students, I don't cook a lot. And it is a good excuse for not cooking because I don't cook very well, so I often eat to the canteen. So, I must confess, I eat fat! ^^

Parties and other activities

We are a few International students in the University of Cumbria. The International department sometimes organise some trips to walk and visit the countryside.

About the students parties, actually there are two main night clubs: the Elements and the Sugar House. Both are situated closed to each other.

Trips

To get attrative prices when I travel, I bought the Railcard for the 16-25 persons. The card allows me to have 30% off on a ticket prices! I paid it 38 pounds and I have "reimbursed" it with 5 trips.

The first trip is when I went to Preston.

After I visited Manchester for shopping.

The third and the fourth trips were to go to Liverpool.

The last one for the moment, is the trip to Edinburgh where I passed 3 days and 2 nights!

To follow what I have written in the article A sunny day, I will talk about the day we spent, Amandine and me in Preston.

Preston is a town with 130 000 habitants (according to Wikipedia)

whose 27% of students.

It was the first town I visited after Lancaster since I was in the UK, and Preston seemed to be very bigger than Lancaster which has almost 46 000 habitants!

I got up at 7.15am in order to be behind the Lancaster City Museum at 8.30am, where Amandine waited for me. We took the train to Preston at 9.12am. We arrived in Preston rail station 15 min later. The station is very big!

As we had time before our appointment to get our insurance number, we went to the Fishergate Shopping centre which is in front of the station. After we had to ask for directions because there were not a lot of direction signs at the output of the station !    

We arrived in advance in the Jobcentre where we had our appointment. We just had to answer a few questions about us, our identity, our study and what job we want to do in the UK. However it didn't look like an evaluation, and we will get our insurance number in two weeks.  

After this, we were very hungry but we had to wait 12am for lunch so we did shopping in another shopping centre ^^

We were lucky, this day were sunny and we enjoyed the blue sky.

At noon we rushed to a big Chinese buffet . It was very nice and the restaurant was very big and beautiful. 

And the more important thing, it only cost 6.30 pounds for a lunch!! What surprised me is the fact that they mix English food and Chinese food in this Chinese restaurant. Indeed, there are chicken nuggets, chips and other food, and for the dessert there were only English cakes and the famous jelly with fruits inside. We tasted it and it is not very good...

Then, we visited the city centre, did shopping again and we were in the Harris Museum & Art Gallery which is a beautiful building with paintings, objects and explanations about Preston history. In this bulding there are also activies to do with children and on one part of the museum we can dress up with clothes from the 19th or 20th Century! 

As the museum closed at 5pm we left it and headed to the rail station crossing one last time the city centre and Fishergate Shopping centre. 

It was a very good day! And we went home a little bit tired...

The 2nd February, Amandine (a friend from ESDES) and me enjoyed the lovely weather of this day; we went to the rail station in order to get a ticket to go to Preston on Wednesday. Indeed we have taken an appointement there in order to get our insurance number to be able to work in the UK.

After, as the weather was not bad we walked near the Lancaster Castle and The 

Priory Church of St Mary. We took beautiful pictures.

The Priory Church was open so we entered it.

The Priory Church is very big and beautiful, it seems very warm for a Church and there are two heavenly organs. We had luck to be able to hear people playing organ. It was very great, the son of organs is both so mighty and mild.

The Priory Church was formerly called St Mary's Church Lancaster, it is the parish church of Lancaster. Its origins are Saxon and Roman.