Summer news from Bristol - Bristol Home Stay Tuition (finished - almost!)

SUMMER IS COMING!

View from the roof of my new extension

Look at that view! Standing on the roof of my new extension, you can see across the new development next door and to the countryside which surrounds Bristol. Isn't it wonderful?

Class photo of final day

I thought I would update you on the recent developments here in Bristol and tell you about my latest adventures and students. As I mentioned in my last blog, I went to Rome to visit a former student, Cristiana. She invited me to come to her school and meet her students, who range in age from 11 to 14. They were very excited about meeting me. They prepared many, many questions for me, such as 'What is your favourite colour?', 'Do you have any pets?', 'What did you do last week?? 'What is your daily routine?' For many of them, it was the first time they had met an English person. It was a great experience for them and really lovely for me too. It was good to be back in a classroom with young students again!

Dinner with Cristiana's friends
 and fellow teachers

I also explored Rome, where I had lived many years ago. Cristiana arranged for me to meet her friends and other teachers of English and we ate a marvellous dinner of delicious Italian food, most of it prepared by her mother.

View of the famous Colosseum

The founding myth of Rome
Romulus and Remus

I returned to teach Gianni, a 63 year old man from the Veneto region of Italy.  He came to visit Bristol in April with a friend and  had four hours of lessons with me. He decided to come for an intensive course for one week in June. He was very low level but even with this short course, he really made enormous improvement.

Before my little break in Rome, I taught Marcus, a policeman from Switzerland and Rudi from Barcelona. Marcus decided he needed to improve his English because he has to attend many presentations in English. Rudi loves travelling and diving, and wanted to improve his English to help him with this.

So far this year, I have had five students who have come to Bristol for an intensive course to improve their English and discover this lively city. Now I have a little break without students, until July.

Rudi from Barcelona in class

Marcus, in front of the M-Shed,
Bristol Harbourside

Dinner with Gianni at The Lido

In July, I will teach Jan from Switzerland. He is a professional singer, a counter-tenor, specialising in Baroque and early music. Then Agnès will come for two weeks. She is a professional restorer of paintings at The Louvre and needs specialised art vocabulary. She is also vegetarian and has a catering business. I'm a little nervous because in fact, she's vegan! This means that she not only doesn't eat meat and fish, but also no eggs, cheese or milk. I will find it hard to cook without at least yoghurt or feta cheese. However, I'm sure we will have a very interesting time and I will certainly learn some new dishes to cook.

For the moment, I have the first two weeks of July which are still available and the last two weeks of August. So please contact me quickly if you are interested in a course this summer. It's a busy time of year and with one booking, as you know, I am full!

And already, I have bookings for October and November this year. So don't delay - write to me today!

Lucy at Briswool
Exhibition at the M-Shed

Woolly Bristol
Bristol landmarks knitted by volunteers

Dinner time at Bristol Home Stay Tuition

Building Bristol Home Stay Tuition: Spring in my new kitchen!

Cristiana at lunch in new kitchen

Spring has almost arrived - the days are starting to get lighter, spring flowers are growing and the sun is shining! What a relief to arrive here, after the difficult and dark winter, struggling to complete the extension and hopingeverything would be ready for my first students.

Above you can see Cristiana, having lunch with me after her morning of classes. Cristiana is a teacher of English at a secondary school in Rome. Her students are aged between 11-14 years. She came for a short and intensive course over Easter to refresh her English. She arrived on Tuesday 22nd March. We had four hours of classes every day from Wednesday morning to Easter Saturday morning and again from Easter Monday to Tuesday 29th March. She returned to Rome on Wednesday 30th March. 

Lunch at Wild Garlic

We had a rest on Easter Sunday and I drove Cristiana to the Cotswolds. She had told me that she would love to visit this area, which is well-known in Italy. We visited the pretty village of Tetbury and after we had a special Easter lunch at Wild Garlic in Nailsworth. We were joined there by Sandra and her partner, friends of mine who live in Nailsworth. This was a great opportunity for Cristiana to practise speaking English. The food was delicious!  

During Cristiana's course, she came with me to a morning of coffee and hot cross buns  on Good Friday. This was at a neighbour's house and was another chance for Cristiana to meet and talk to English people. She also enjoyed tasting a hot cross bun - she knew about this traditional Easter bun but had never tried one before.

Cristiana chatting to Maggie

We also went out to listen to live music, a duo of guitar and singer, called The Black Feathers. They played upstairs in local pub and were very, very good. Beautiful harmonies and wonderful voices. We were also invited me to meet other friends and neighbours of mine, who were all happy to meet Cristiana and talk to her; thank you Giles and Mora and Lindsay and Derek!

Now I am having a short break which gives me an opportunity to continue with the work on my house. This week, the exterior of the new extension and the courtyard were painted. Next steps are to build a deck outside my patio doors into the garden and then a garden shed and finish my courtyard and fill it with plants.

Newly painted courtyard walls

On Sunday 17th April, my next student will arrive. Marcus is a German policeman who lives in Zurich, Switzerland. He will study with me for two weeks. After he leaves, a Catalan man will come for a two week course. Rudi wants to improve his English because he is semi-retired and wants to travel. English has become the global language, as you can see!

After he leaves, I will go to visit Cristiana's students at her school in Rome. This is a great opportunity for her students to speak to a real English person and practise asking and answering questions. And it will be great to see Rome in May, a city I once lived in!

ss Great Britain, Brunel's  steamship

Beautiful Bath Abbey

Building Bristol Home Stay Tuition - In my kitchen, at last! March 2016

My new kitchen, at last!

Look! There it is... my kitchen is ready at last. And I have started to use it, although it still feels a little strange.

But there are still problems and things which are not finished or not correct. This means that I have to find and pay other people to finish and to correct. It is very frustrating and I am quite exhausted, as you can imagine. But this is great progress and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

View from new hallway to front door

My first student of 2016  arrived on Sunday 29th February. I worked very, very hard to prepare for her arrival. I had to clean the carpets with a carpet cleaning machine. I had to move a lot of furniture and unpack all my things. I realised that I had MUCH too much STUFF. My new kitchen does not have as much storage space as my old kitchen.

My student arrived very late, around midnight on Sunday. She is from Barcelona and she is the sister of my first student, who came to study with me eight years ago. She is a child psychologist for the Catalan government and she wants to improve her English so she can travel and communicate with people all over the world.

Anna doing her homework

When we started our classes on Monday morning, we discussed her reasons for learning English. We also talked about the best way for her to learn and planned the course. Her level was quite low, about pre-intermediate, and she wanted to increase her vocabulary. She also needed to refresh her memory about our irregular verbs and to practise asking questions, remembering to use the auxiliary, or not with the verb 'BE'  ('DO you LIKE..'? 'DID you EAT..?', 'ARE you..?', 'WERE you..?').

Anna working in the new classroom

She is working very hard and has improved enormously. Now she is speaking with English sentences, with English word order, rather than translating from Spanish. I call this language 'Spanglish'.

I took her to listen to some great live jazz music. We went to see James Morton and his group playing at The Gallimaufry in Stokes Croft.

James Morton and guests

Breakdancing Jesus in Stokes Croft

On Saturday, we went on a tour together. She is crazy about graffiti or street art. Bristol is famous as the home of 'Banksy', the world's most famous street artist. The tour was very interesting and we were very lucky with the weather.
Here are some examples of the street art we saw:

Banksy's 'Mild, Mild West'

Anna will leave on Saturday 12th March. Then I have a rest for one week. My next student is an English teacher from Rome. She will come for a short but intensive course of eight days, over the Easter holidays. She wants to refresh her English and discover new ways to engage her students with the English language.

If you are interested in a course with me, the next opportunity is the beginning of April or the middle of May onwards.

First day in the classroom

Cooking in my new kitchen

A new year - no new kitchen! Building Bristol Home Stay Tuition

New extension, from neighbour's garden

So here I am, in late January and I am STILL not in  my kitchen. The builder told me that we would be finished by the end of November 2015. I expected that there would be some problems and hoped that I would be finished by the end of December 2015 or at the latest, early January 2016.

There have been some enormous problems, mostly caused by the incompetence and lack of planning or thinking by my builder. For example, he built my kitchen WITHOUT GAS, even though one of his builders rang me in September to check that I had a gas hob in the kitchen,

New kitchen

I don't have any heating in my new kitchen because they failed to connect the power supply to the controls for the underfloor heating and now have to connect it from the boiler upstairs to the control unit in the new kitchen. This means that they have had to run the cable from my boiler in my upstairs bathroom, outside through the courtyard and then back into new kitchen,

Towel radiator illegally converted to electricity

They fitted my fridge but omitted to connect it to the power supply (didn't plug it in first!). They also destroyed the hose for the dishwasher and so I had to have a totally new dishwasher from IKEA.

My new bathroom is supposed to have a towel radiator which is operated from the central heating system. The builder has illegally and incompetently converted the radiator to an electric towel radiator, invalidating my 10 year warranty. This is because he finished the floor in the bathroom and then realised that the radiator should be connected to the central heating system.

One day, in the near future, I can see that my new kitchen and dining room will be a nice room.

But for the moment, I am living and cooking  in my bedroom. It is not very nice and I can't wait for it be finished.

I have a student coming for a course at the beginning of March. So everything must be finished by then!!

New kitchen/dining room with sun