Brighton 2k15 part 5: Booth museum and me getting lost (as usual)

 Booth museum
One morning we split the groups in three: kayaking, sea life center and Booth museum. The museum is basically only dead stuffed animals that creeped most of the group out (including me, and I was not really good at keeping a straight face I'm afraid).

this things was cool though

On the way back we however got the chance to ride on a bus with open ceiling, guess if my group was excited!

We got to see a lot of Brighton this way

Which is a perfect reminder to show you some of my explorations of Brighton!

My neighbourhood, or Getting lost in Brighton

Brighton is very up and down. My host family lived on a very steep hill, so this was my view every (sunny) morning ;)

Our bus stop was called "Grand Ocean" because of this building that we believe has once been a hotel.

Brighton is full of cool graffitti

And the traditional coloured british doors

I spent many hours in this graphic novel shop <3

In my neighbourhood there was also this house! Do you see the Tardis sign? And the Dr Who dog K9? :D

Brighton 2k15 part 4: Portsmouth and Beach BBQ

Portsmouth
One beautiful Saturday our group took the train to Portsmouth. There we looked at some old cool ships:

Frida, who absolutely adores ships, taught me the difference between a ship and a boat, and a ton of other things that I forgot as soon as I learned them ;)

woopwoop

 BBQ
One windy evening we went to the beach to bbq some marshmallows and bananas.

complete focus is key

Georgia forgot to remove the cardboard before she lit the grills. Lucky for us, we bbq on rocks so nothing caught fire ;)

In the bakcground you can see the pier :)

Brighton 2k15 part 3: The beach, the celebrity and the leader transformation

The Thistle group

has some very cool kids

Unless their leader Georgia jumps on their bean bags and scare them

or wins over them in Bowling

oh well, they look happy anyway ;)

Finally the beach!

How some of them had longed for this moment!

 "Erika we didn't bring any swimsuits, change of clothes or towels, can we swim anyway?"

 "Erika you are just like a boring mom - don't swim to far, be careful, and don't get sick!"

The celebrity

Somewhere in there is a famous youtuber

So just as we are to leave our meeting point an (apparently) famous youtube vlogger "Alfie" shows up. It is pure hystria from the students. I will give him all the credit though, to stay and nicely take pictures with maybe 100 screaming (and crying(!)) girls, all with a smile.

I had never heard of him before Brighton. Georgia watched some of his videos later but didn't leave the greatest review (that's four minutes of my life I'll never get back) so I never got around watching it myself ;)

One girl in my group actually managed to meet four big vloggers while we were here. She met Alfie, and just as with him ran into pewdiepie + girlfriend on the street one day (him I had at least heard of). During our stay some guy called Marcus Butler had a book signing as well, so she went on that one. Cool!

Pimp the leader 
One of our more successfull activities was pimp the leader. The students got reeaaaalllyy into it. Georgias hair got coloured green (it's not fair, my group said, yours is already pink, we can't colour that!). Pirta was the most fun though, since she walked past a few of our colleagues and they didn't even recongnise her!

Brighton 2k15 part 2: London Sightseeing and Seven sisters

London sightseeing
The weekends were all about excursions, and our very first Saturday was all about London! Me, Pirta and the teacher Frida took 29 excited students on a train and looked at all wonders that you can find in London.

Thistle

Me, Frida and Pirta are enjoying our lunch

The London trip was really fun, and it was great getting to know new people. Frida was the students teacher and met them during the hours we didn't. It was interesting to learn more about the actual education part of EF. 

Seven sisters
On a very sunny Sunday it was time for me, Pirta and Georgia to take the bus a far out from Brighton. Seven sisters is, as far as I could gather, an area with wonderful nature, surronded by seven big hills (hence the name). It was big grass areas, goats, the sea and cliffs everywhere. 

Selfie!

Leader group pic!  Emily (british), me, Satu, Pirta and Julia

The groups Lily and Thistle. First a serious one

- and then a silly one!

We were really lucky with the nice weather, since the trip would have been horrible in rain. But with the nice sun, and all the sun burns later, we had a really nice time. It was a lot of walking, and a bit of climbing though (I did not enjoy the climbing (for some reason I always forget that I am afraid of heights until I'm actually up there)).

During this weekend a lot of host family issues had to be handled as well. But hey, we thought, that seems reasonable the first day. On the Monday the students are to leave in their five day evaluation and after those issues are taken care of those kinds of problems should settle down right? I am amazed on how the same kind of problems kept happening non stop for three weeks. But I suppose that is aso part of the experience ^^'

Sunday evening was also the very first disco! 800 (!) EF students from all over Brighton gathered in one big night club to dance. Insane!

Brighton 2k15 part 1: The first three days

So my three weeks in Brighton has come to an end. It was really great in a lot of ways, completely exhausting, and sometimes just plain scary. I didn't really have time to blog or anything during my stay there, so here comes some of my adventures in Brighton 2015!

The travel there went really well. I got help checking all my twelve ladies in at the airport and we took off! One girl got a small panic attack during the flight, which was a bit scary. She had her friend next to her though and it was really nice seeing the girls she had known for just a couple of hours sitting and trying to comfort her.

When we arrived to England we took a bus to the meeting point, and after meeting my co-leader Georgia for the first time, and getting a quick briefing about everything, I and the austrian leader Julia got a taxi to our new host family. It was a super sweet couple in their fourties, Rich and Deryck. We got a "tour" of the 4 room apartment, and Rich made us a night snack. Later that night our third flatmate, the italian leader Valentina, arrived and the house was full!

a very proper british midnight snack I would say

The three roomies

The second day was all about briefings and orientation. I got to meet all the swedish kids for the first time, since I only flew with the twelve from Gothenburg (fifty in total) together with the swedish leader Satu. I also got to meet my activity group "Thistle" and Georgia showed me and Thistle around in Brighton. She later told me that she herself had only arrived in Brighton one day before us and basically managed the tour through google maps ;)

The moment I put my feet on English soil Bruce started to act up though, and refused to load his battery. I took him to a phone store, who basically told me that the cable was glitching. He survuved the whole stay in Brighton fortunately :)

I managed to explore some of my own as well. A quick photo into "the lanes"

 The lanes is two areas in Brighton which is pretty much small lanes filled with different shops. It is lovely just walking around in and it was my to go place just to spend a few hours getting lost in during my stay.

The third day me and Georgia got to meet Thistles' third leader: Pirta from Finland. She and her group arrived one day later than everyone else. Our group is now filled with three leaders and 29 students from Slovakia, Austria, Germany, Finland and Sweden!

Me and Georgia

Pirta

They told me in Stockholm that the first three days probably is the most difficult, and I can totally agree. Everything is new, you still don't know anything and trying to figure out where to find all information, and who to talk to when. At the samt time the kids call you constantly about all different kinds of things, and you want to help them with their problems.

But we survived our first three days! The rest should be easy sailing!

Right?