Hello everyone,

Welcome to my first blog. Today is the already 6th day I woke up in London. In my blogs I will tell you all about my adventures in the UK.

Well, let's start at the beginning. When I achieved my MAVO degree, I had to find something else to study. I'd come up with a lot of different things and eventually I was very interested in becoming an English teacher. When you want to study for becoming an English teacher, you first need an MBO level 4 degree, which I didn't have yet. Eventually I decided to start with the education called International Business Studies. This is a bilingual course. I decided to do this course, because then I would improve my English a lot and this would be an advantage for my next education.

Currently I am in my third and also last year of this course. In the third year, it is obligated to do an internship of 5 months. I decided to go to London for this internship.

So, that's why I'm currently with my host family in Finchley Central (close to the centre of London). I decided to live with a host family instead of renting an apartment, because I wanted to get to know more about the English culture and then what's better than live with an English family.

I left Holland last Saturday, together with my parents. In the beginning I was very nervous for the arrival at the host family because I had no idea what to expect, but when the moment was there, they were all so kind and my parents could really get along with them as well. All of this made my mom worry less, because she knew I was gong to be in good hands.

The first couple of days were still a bit strange because it takes a little while to get comfortable with this whole new situation, but they helped me with everything. Last Sunday, they showed me around and they walked with me to my internship company. This was very nice, because the next morning I had to walk down there myself.

The company where I will do my internship is called: James Lakeland. This is a clothing company, but I will be working at the head office and not in the retail stores.

On Monday I had to start at 9.30. I was very nervous, because, again, I had no idea what to expect. When I arrived after my 30 minute walk to the company, the people were very nice. After I got a small tour through the building and got introduced to everyone, I had to start working. There was a big sample sale going on, so there were lots of customers who wanted to buy clothes. Normally they don't sell clothes because it's the main office, but twice a year they have a sample sale.

The first 4 days were actually all the same, I had to help customers and make sure everything looked nice. There are also 3 other interns and in the afternoon I had to go hand out flyers with them.

On Friday, I actually did the same as the previous days. The last two hours I helped with the orders, this was more interesting because it has more to do with my education.

The next weeks will be more interesting, this is because right now there are also some other things going on which normally aren't there.

Hopefully you liked this and I promise the next blogs will be more interesting :)

- Anouk