TWGHs Kwok Yat Wai College: It was just wonderful!

On the first day of school, I could totally feel the differences between Hong Kong and Edinburgh.

To begin with, it was raining when we went to school. Almost all pedestrians did not take an umbrella, they just wore hats. When in Rome, do as the Romans do—I didn't take an umbrella or a raincoat out. We took bus and then walk a short distance to school. I found that Scottish people can cope with rainy days calmly. Perhaps it's exactly because of the different environments that cause the differences in how we handle adversity.  

When I came to school, I met the head teacher, Mr Dempster and he treated us well with big smile. I really appreciated his kindness. Then we started to get to know students in our sister school by a ice-breaking-game. It really enhanced my confidence through commucating with them. In addition, the students showed us around and told me about their school with patience. They had over 20 subjects to choose which was really amazed me. And they could learn how to dance in PE lesson.

After paying a visit around school, we had lessons with our buddies. To be honest, it's quiet challenging for me to understand what Scottish teachers had taught about. From my perspective, I could feel that it was quite free for students in class. In other words, it seemd that students could chat anytime but they can focus on their work in a short time when there was class work distributed by teacher. Also, they had their own realization about what they could do or what they could not do without certain rules. Although I could not understand the learning content of the class most of the time, I still felt that the students here were strongly self-regulated.

The most wonderful lesson I had was Mandarin. The reason why I described as wonderful was because they had different ways for Scottish students to learn a new language. Teacher could teach some words through games in order to let students gain more interests in learning Mandarin. Also, I could feel that Scottish teacher was keen on teaching and learning Mandarin. Every language has its own meaning to learn. Now I see why we need to have some exchange programs around the world.

At the end of the day,we had eight people all together to have dinner. It was still raining but the wind was so strong that our umbrella flew up so we ran to the restaurant as quick as we could. I noticed Scottish people got used to a quite change in weather. Let us try to live with it.

S5 Xu Wei, Rita

TWGHs Kwok Yat Wai College

Host school: Boroughmir High School