Monday, July 18th, 2011. The day started off with a bang - that is, sausages for breakfast, along with toast and English porridge prepared by our dedicated chef on site. After breakfast, the kids were all taken to their various English lessons taught by our staff of seven ESL teachers, Belinda & Caitlin from Melbourne, James from Essex, Peter from Stirling, Ruxandra from Bucharest, Christina from Brazil and Lisa from Seattle, WA.The kids were given an initial assessment test, and by the time they finished, they were ready for their second hour of English lessons!
They were introduced to each other as well as to their teachers, and learned about all the different places their classmates come from. We are very excited to have an eclectic mix of kids this year, including nationals from China, Israel, Romania, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, including others.For lunch, the chef made restaurant quality pizza along with fresh fruit, bottled water and English "squash".For the first activity of the day, the children were very happy to have the option of choosing between dance, fencing, or t-shirt making. Chloe, one of our activity leaders (and girls' dorm leader), led the kids in a dance routine to Chris Brown's "Forever". Dunja and Miren, among fifteen others, did exceptionally well and showed a great deal of effort in learning the choreography.Steve and Jamie, two of the other activity leaders (and teenage boys' dorm leaders), led the lads in a game of cricket, in which Ferran and Vincent scored numerous points by giving their all throughout the game! Baptist, nine years old from France, was a very enthusiastic member of all his activities during the day, including the game of cricket and the hour and a half of dance.For dinner, we were lucky enough to receive spaghetti along with delicious oven baked garlic bread, and English apple crumble for desert. Once our stomachs were settled, there was a competition between the four teams; blue, yellow, red and green. Congratulations are in order to the green team who won a grand total of twenty team points, having played the "generation game". There were four activities, "tallest tower", "pictionary", "taboo", "human words" and everyone had a super fun time, and did a great job! Good job to everyone!Special thanks to all the staff members of XUK English - so far everyone has done an awesome job, and we're all excited about the coming weeks!