keane

As I already told you before, I was living for half year in Brighton. In this new post I will try to describe you this really nice city located in the  South Coast of England, at 80 Km ish from London.
Brighton is a very nice place, above all in summer. It has 300.000 citizens approximately and the most characteristic of the city is the large number of gays and lesbian who live there. It is a city plenty of students , because of  there are  2 or 3 Universities. The most important places to visit are “The Pavilion” and the “West Pier”, that it was  burnt 3 years ago.
The city of Brighton & Hove acts as a magnet for lesbian and gay men from all over the world attracted to its bohemian atmosphere, open minded attitudes. Brighton has now long been known as Britain’s number one gay resort.
Kemptown has become known  as the “Gay Village” and has a wide range of services, like hotels, shops,… very similar to the  “Gay-Eixample” in Barcelona. The focal point is Sr. Jame’s Street and the Old Steine. It’s here where you can find most of the clubs, bars, etc mentioned in the guides.
During my stay I lived some funny situations, even embarrassed. One of them it was   when I just arrived to a new house my 2^nd night in England , and the landlord told me that my flatmates were lesbian and very noisy. At the beginning I didn’t understand why he told me that, however, I found out  easily when suddenly a “noisy” made me awake very early at the morning. They were making love and having a good time. And they didn’t care about their privacy in the house at all.
It was one of my first surprises, comparing with the behavior of any Spanish young girl or boy related with SEX. In general,  Spanish people have more respect to the others and need to keep more their intimacy than English people.
According to all the Spanish people that I met there, the city more similar to Brighton in Spain would be BARCELONA. You can breathe good atmosphere, open- minded people, you can meet people around the world, listen music alive  in the beach all afternoons – evening in the pubs….
It’s a city where you can work, study , learn a lot of things. They have a wide range of cultural activities and concerts for all the people interested in. And also there are festivals like “gay parade” (Amazing and unforgettable even for Barcelona citizens), concentration of motorbikes like Harley-Davidson, recalling the film that it was shoot  there 20 years ago, called “QUADROFENIA”, etc…..
I encourage all of you to spend at least one weekend, visiting  Brighton in summer. You can find cheaper flights from Barcelona to London (Gatwich) by Easy-Jet.
I am sure that you won’t regret your decision…..
HAVE A GOOD TRIP and HAVE FUN!!!!!!

In this new post I am going to speak about my own experience living in a foreign country for a very short period of time. Giving you these details I guess some of you will be able to find out who I am.  However, in that moment I think there is no point to hide any longer our own identity.
All happens 3 years ago, when, as I already told you in a previous post, I was studing English in EOI Drassanes in the meanwhile I was looking for a job. One day a classmate told me that she was thinking to move to England to work, because she had some friends there.
This idea made me think, and at the end I decided to go to England with her. I had been thinking to go abroad some years before, when I was younger than now, however, for personal reasons I didn’t do it, and I wouldn’t want to go alone. So, I thought “better late than never”!!!
We went to Brighton in June and I was living there until Christmas. It was a short period of time in my life. however I remind it like a very funny and very interesting experience.
I was very lucky because just arrived, I went to the “Job Centre” and I found 2 different jobs. One of them it was like kitchen support in a Restaurant and the other one like catering assistant in a military Residence for old blind people, called Sant Dunstans. They were ex-military people injured in the 2^nd world war, or being war prisoner or even in the Normandy disembark.
So, I started to work helping blind people 5 days after being in England. I had to serve them in the breakfast, tea break and lunch time and help them to cut the meal if they needed help. Moreover, I had to lay and clear the tables in the dinning room and also clear the kitchen.
It was an easy job and the weekly salary it was low. However, I could afford to live there sharing a house with other people, even saving some money in order to go to visit London and some other places of England like Bristol, Bath, Canterbury… The summary is that I felt very happy there and I encourage all of you to go abroad once.
In addition to this, it was nice for my personal knowledge to have the opportunity to speak with disabled people and learn a lot of them. Their stories were amazing and some incredible.
If you want to know more about their lives and their experiences you can visit their web (http://www.st-dunstans.org.uk/)

Last week in the class, Nuria explained to us how well she felt, after her recently experience, like a teacher in a Secondary School. She came back to teach them after a long time, therefore  she was thinking a lot about which kind of activity to place in order to entertain and teach the teenagers at the same time.
Finally she got it, and her activity was a success. She told us all the students were paid attention to the screen and they seemed to be interested in the film. At the end, some of them,  even participate asking some questions according to that film.
Apparently, it can be an easy work, but I can assure you that it doesn’t.
Nuria’s comments made me remind when I used to work as a teacher of ESO and also 1^st- 2^nd FP courses, some years ago.
I got this job by chance, just when I was looking for a job in a proper company after finishing my degree in Business administration in the UB.
It was a big surprise for me to receive a call from a School by SCC (Servei Català de Col.locació) in order to teach teenager.
It took me time to made up my mind, however I did it, and I got the job.
I was working in that School for a 2 years and a half, and I really enjoyed a lot. From time to time, when I’ m in a bad mood at work,  I am still regretting myself why I gave it up. However, nowadays there is not point to regret about our decisions from the past.
I decided to leave that job, because it was not very clear the new “Studies reform”  on that time and I wanted  to try to work in the “Business world” .
I was very young and brave at that time, and I thought than I could achieve all I wanted. Some years later, I realized that the “real world” is harder than I used to think, and the main problem in the Companies is only to get profits. They don’t mind about the human or social side from the life or even from the workers, and I suppose this is the part from the teacher’s job that I miss more.