{"id":1769,"date":"2012-09-13T12:56:31","date_gmt":"2012-09-13T10:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johannazweiger.wordpress.com\/?p=1769"},"modified":"2014-11-22T15:25:08","modified_gmt":"2014-11-22T15:25:08","slug":"english-ground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johannazweiger.at\/?p=1769","title":{"rendered":"English ground!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last weekend something amazing happened. For the first time in my life I would put my feet on English ground. September 7 was a lovely (!) summer day and the weather was brilliant (no rain at all – can you believe that?). And no, I did not<\/em> go to London, but to Derby<\/strong>, a small-ish city in the East Midlands, mostly known for its football club Derby County<\/em>. So why would I go there you ask? Well, I’ll be a foreign language assistant (FLA) for German at Derby High School, a well known independent school in Derby, starting on October 1 this year. So the idea was to get familiar with the city and with traveling by plane and train (which turned out to be rather simple).<\/p>\n

Getting off the Airbus we already experienced what “British politeness” means: I wanted to buy a British SIM card at the SPAR<\/em> store at Stansted Airport, so I asked the cashier for advice. He explained that lebara<\/em> cards never really work with phones from outside the country and that O2 would probably be the best option for me. In case I have any questions in the future I should just go ask him. He was talking for let’s say 5 minutes and … no-one complained! There were a lot of other customers behind me – not saying a word. I was stunned. Had I been in Austria, they might have started a riot already …<\/p>\n

Later that day we arrived at Chuckles Guesthouse<\/a> located in Crompton Street in Derby, a really nice place indeed. The breakfast was deeeeeeelicious and the couple running the place was super friendly and helpful. I met my mentor teacher on Saturday, chatting about my job for three hours. \ud83d\ude42
\nWe also visited “Ye Olde Dolphin Inne”<\/a> (allegedly that’s Derby’s oldest pub) trying to get familiar with English beer, Derby’s city centre including its beautiful Cathedral and four shared flats (I was trying to find a place to stay, but couldn’t find anything suitable). Oh, and Lara Croft Way of course. In case you don’t know: Lara Croft was invented in Derby. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

So, I had a wonderful weekend, filled with a lot of “lovely”s and “thank you”s and I’m really looking forward to September 28 – when I will be finally moving to England. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n