ATC Bray

It's time to tell you about my trip to Ireland. The time period is spring (March). Duration: 2 weeks. Trip’s goal: unforgettable vacation with benefits. I have been choosing between Malta, England and Ireland. I have chosen Ireland for some reasons, and one of them is harmonious mixture of cityscape and nature. Eventually, I started searching schools in Irish cities. I refused Dublin, because I prefer small and calm towns. Firstly, a school in Limerick caught me, but then I found out about school in Bray. I’ll tell a little about the town I lived in: Brey, 40 minutes away from the capital of Ireland by car. The town is not big, but cozy, it is located on the sea shore. You can ask me, why Bray exactly? Because 2 weeks are my vacation! Vacation is supposed to be accompanied by the sea air and the sound of the surf, seagulls’ screaming and delicious ice cream. Except the sea presence, 2 weeks language immersion was also important to me. And I got lucky, that school wasn’t popular amongst Russian guys. I was the only one speaking Russian (excluding a few guys from China and Japan who could say “hi” and “how are you doing” in my first language, that was soooo nice of them). A school also has a representative Joseph who knows ten languages, including Russian. I decided to live in residence which is located 5-7 minutes from school by foot on the first coastline. By the way, getting ahead of myself, while I was booking the residence, my manager made me happy by saying that I am going to have a beach view from my room window. In fact, it was nothing to shout about, but it didn’t shade my time there. The nice thing is that I had a room with a personal bathroom, but let me put it in an order: I came on Sunday and checked in (by the way, I didn’t pay any deposit, although my manager said vice versa). At first Monday I had to come to school earlier to take a test, afterwards, I got to B+ group. That day our classes started at 11:30. I had 20 hours per week course which means that classes are supposed to be at 9:00 till 13:30. It’s been additional !free! 1 hour lessons three times a week: business course, pronunciation, an additional course (Monday-Wednesday-Thursday), all lessons were interesting, and I was amazed of teachers. Most of students had 15 hours per week course – they had the same schedule as mine, but Friday was a day off for most of them. I had no more than 11 students in my group, sometimes everyone came to classes, sometimes just a half. I want to pay your attention to the fact that my course took place in March. This is a low season, so the classes are not chock-full, same for free classes, for example, it’s been just 2-4 of us on a business course. I want to say a few words about preparation of visa documents. I used LinguaTrip services, specifically Maria Shatalova’s. There have been many managers I talked to, but Maria answered me much faster and comprehensively, thanks to her! By the way, I have to mention that courier order (from my city to the embassy and back) is included in price of visa preparation....

I liked the school, the teachers were excellent! There were some problems with finding a residence because no photos were added to the site when I made my booking, and there was a bit of an incorrect description. Now everything is fixed.

Ireland is an extremely beautiful country! The school was great, but the host family has left bad impression. The school organised a lot of interesting activities for students, many of them are free. The only thing I did not like at all was my host family. They made a good first impression but then... I had a lot of misunderstandings with them. The food was awful: only ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat products, pizza, pasta, toasts. I asked my hosts to cook anything else but they decide not to take to heart my desires. Anyway, the house itself was comfortable and cosy....

Since I lived in a family, I had an opportunity to communicate in English not only with teachers and new friends at school, but also at home with native speakers every day. The classes are taught in a relaxed, friendly atmosphere, everyone is very nice, teachers are really professional and love their work. I liked the selection of study materials. Especially the extra classes and open lessons on the culture of Ireland. Additional classes are thought of as lessons on speaking, but, actually, they are much wider and also expand your vocabulary, etc....