Have you ever been to England/USA?

[habichnicht]

My first visit to GB was when I was 15 years old. I stayed there for two weeks with a friend and her family in a little village in South Wales and I didn't have any difficulties in understanding and speaking english. After having stayed there for one week I even thought and dreamed in english.
But this is very long ago. I still don't have difficulties in reading english texts, especially scientific texts, but I have only rare opportunities in talking to native english speakers.

[Taubnessel]

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[DrStefanie]

My first trip to the UK was in 12th grade with the English-LK. We went to London and (you wouldn't believe it) the weather was awesome... no rain just sunshine for a whole week!

After school I went to live in the USA for one year and work as an aupair. So I have seen quite some interesting places there...
I had to take a four day workshop in New York. It was so amazing seeing all those things like Statue of Liberty, Central Park...
Then I flew on to Atlanta, Georgia where I spend 12 month working for a family watching their kids. It was an awesome experience and I'm so glad that I did it...
During the aupair stay I went to California and Nevada for vacation with some aupair friends: first we went to San Francisco (the most marvellous city on the planet) by plane and spent three days packed with a lot of sight seeing. I immediately fell in love with that city!
Then we drove down the 101 to Los Angeles in a rental car.
On the way we stopped in Carmel by the beach. Carmel is just a very small village, with a very nice beach.
We lived in Hollywood, so we didn't have to walk far to see all the touristy stuff. But Hollywood isn't really the best place to live - it's dirty and messy, homeless people walk into fast food restaurants to beg for food and money and other people do drugs on the streets... I was kind of dissappointed - I had expected LA to be more glamourous.
Next we drove to Las Vegas, Nevada, where we spend three more days. We decided to drive through Death Valley, which was pretty cool, because where ever you looked there was just desert...! We stopped in a little "town" - I'm not even sure it has a name (it's just a store with a gas station and two houses in the middle of nowhere).
In LAs Vegas everything is colorful, and has blinking lights. We went into a casino to play on the slots and I even went out of the casino 5$ richer!
The coolest things in Vegas is the hotels. In the Venitian (I think) the ceiling looks like there are real clouds, and the Bellagio has a water fountain show that was quite impressive! We also did a sight seeing tour of the Grand Canyon - with a very small, fairly old airplane...

In april I'm gonna spend two weeks of vacation in Atlanta with my host family! I'm really looking forward to that...

Gotta go now, Steffi

[schlafmuetze]

Good evening everybody,

I have been to both countries, GB and USA. When I realized that my English was kind of bad in eleventh grade, I sent myself and my brother to Eastbourne, Southengland for 3 weeks to attend some English classes in 2003. Since there were tons of students like my bro an dme, we actually never talked in English. We lived at some old lady's house who never talked with us, either.

In 2004 I went to the USa, Connecticut was my final destination until 2005, when I got to move thousands of miles west to San Jose, California.

I am going back to California this summer ( can't wait!!) and I will go to England, as soon as I know what I will do there :-)


Have a nice weekend!

[Flauta]

I also had the inverse situation: an exchange student here in may country. It's just strange to speak english and to find the vocabulary if all the people is speeking your native langugae and is unable to speak english.....but a good experience!

Sorry for OT

[teletubs]

My one and only trip to Eastbourne/GB was about ten years ago. The year Steffi Graf won the Wimbledon Championchips and our national football got European Championchip... :-))
I travelled with my friend for language course holidays. Our host was a young mother. Her little son was about 4 or 5years old. Nice place, nice people, nice time....
Well we met a lot of people from other parts of germany. I got to know someone starting his medical studying at the same university as I did.
We visited many places...I only remembered Brighton and London. Brighton...Representing the typically british weather: cold, foggy, rainy. And I also remembered the big sun glasses we tried out. :-oopss
We visited Madame Tussauds taking pictures from the VIPs. I guess Lady Di was standing in the back of the Royals. One year later she died in this awful accident in Paris.
It was a beautiful time in Eastbourne spending much time at the beach, having a lot of barbecue and relaxing the whole time! :-))

I would like to go to GB another time...for travelling or working...I will see.

Have a nice day in a nice place with nice people! :-winky CU

[Juliesch]

Well, I've been in England and in USA.

To England I traveled two times for vacation with my parents. It was really nice even so the weather wasn't as good as expected...

After my graduation I moved to Rochester, NY, USA to live there as an Au Pair. I lived there for a year in a family with 4 Kids (2m, 5f, 12f, 16m). and at the weekends I worked in the local hospital in the Emergency department. It was a really great experience I won't ever miss. The people were all so nice and friendly and you never felt like a stranger there.
I can't wait to go to the USA again. :-winky

[Sackbauer]

My one and only trip to Eastbourne/GB was about ten years ago. The year Steffi Graf won the Wimbledon Championchips and our national football got European Championchip... :-))

loool....

[sunrise10086]

I went to the US with my parents three times (FL and NYC) when I was a teenager. Always loved it because we would buy tons of stuff. :-D
The weather was always nice but too hot in NYC during summertime.
I went to England for the first time aged 16 on a school exchange thing. I fell in love with the country (especially the English countryside) and its entire pace.
This made me go back to work and live in London in 1999 as an Au Pair. Although I hated being an Au Pair, I loved London and I still do. It's a fascinating city and one of the three places I could see myself living at.
The weather is not too bad btw, it dies change a lot, but that's fine. Just make sure to bring an umbrella.

I went to Washington D.C. in the spring of 2001, that was great as well.
I loved their public transport system. ;-)

Having relatives living on the Isle of Wight in Southern England, I travel there a few times a year. The landscape is marvellous and I enjoy people's friendlyness and their quirky humor.

Belfast was my home for four months last year, spending part of my final year training at Queen's University. The people are lovely, wonderful teachers but the weather is just bloody awful, particulary in November. It just makes one very prone to all things suicidal.

My all-time favourite would have to be Chicago where I just spend two months training at Northwestern University. This is just an amazing place, people are extremly friendly, open and welcoming. The only thing which sucks is that you need a car if you want to explore the outskirts of the city. And it's pretty cold in the winter. But I love people's spirit at this fantastic and magical place. The light is just unbelievabe.

[catgut]

The first time I ever visited an English speaking country was in 1996. We took flight to Cork/Ireland. We stayed there 3 weeks and we made some really curious experiences:

1) When we came into an Irish pub, the people there immediately asked us, where we were coming from. And as we truthfully answered "We´re Germans.", they really got crazy and screamed "You beat the English, you beat the English, come on, sit down there and have a drink!"

2) My Mom is not so good in English conversation, but I really wanted to watch a movie (at this time, dvd´s with original language weren´t popular). So I chose "Mr. Bean - the movie" for her. Guess what happened? Mr. Bean had a monologue of 10 minutes! My Mom almost killed me.

3) On our back-flight to Germany, we had to stay in London for about 3 hours, so we decided to take a small visit around the city. My Mom wanted to visit the Buckingham Palace and so we took one of these double-decker-busses and had a wonderful sightseein-tour. But when the tour had come to the end, we didn´t even have had a glance on the Palace.So we bought a map and started walking. And we walked, and walked, and walked, and after about 1 and a half kilometer we wondered about the distance, it must have been much nearer. So we asked some of the people walking by. After a good walk back, almost to the beginning of our tour, we took a small sight behind the big trees in frint of us.. and there was it! The Buckingham Palace.

We almost missed our plan by that. But this is another long story...

[sweetashoney]

lol, it was funny to read through your post, catgut ;-) My mom, grandpa and I almost missed our flight back to good old Germany as well =) We had decided to do a little more sightseeing the day we were flying out. Since no one really bothered to look at the tickets in advance and my mom usually knows everything, we were quite grateful when my grandpa asked to have a look at the plane tickets after we had gotten back from our sightseeing tour. He actually wanted to see for how many hours he could take a nap before we had to go to the airport=) So, we looked at the tickets and saw that we had only an hour left until our plane would depart :-blush Thanks to a good and fast taxi driver we made it to the airport in time :-top

[Flauta]

Has anybody already been to Chicago, Ann Arbor, Cadillac, Iron Mountain or Port Huran and is willing to tell me something about????

How is climate in summer.....I checked the weather lists, but is the weather easy to support or not?
For July, are warm clothes necessary?

[Flauta]

Oh my God.........in a few days I will travel to the USA for the first time in my life.....time passed so fast.

I read a lot of Chicago an the GReat Lakes area and I hope that I will not be disappointed.

[Meuli]

I read a lot of Chicago an the GReat Lakes area and I hope that I will not be disappointed.

I should be surprised if you were :-)

[Flauta]

Thank you!!!!!!!! the beaches look great.....I hope there will be some time for thinks like that.....but I hope it will not be too hot.
And in the books is written, that criminaltiy is very high in Chicago.....I hope it's not worse than in South Africa

[Meuli]

I have no clue actually, have only been to Chicago for a couple days ...
but I can tell for ND: crime rate there is sensationally low :-))

[Flauta]

Yes, I believe....outide the cities many people even don't need to close up there houses when leaving....
I hope that no pickpocket-"bad people" are stealing our things....

[Meuli]

Yes, I believe....outide the cities many people even don't need to close up there houses when leaving....


Nope, they leave their houses unlocked (well I can't remember having seen a door key at my host family^^), they leave their cars unlocked, papers and stuff in the car, keys also .... That is, in the small towns they do so. I found this very fascinating in the beginning.

[Flauta]

And in the cities and in the suburbs they have securtity systems like in a jail...
In thsame country....very fascinating....
In South Africa I firstly lived in a privat-house-Hochsicherheitstrackt

[Meuli]

Hm, that sounds kind of interesting, but I don't think I would want to live like that for a longer period. Especially not with kids.