Have you ever been to England/USA?

[habichnicht]

My first visit to GB was when I was 15 years old. I stayed there for two weeks with a friend and her family in a little village in South Wales and I didn't have any difficulties in understanding and speaking english. After having stayed there for one week I even thought and dreamed in english.
But this is very long ago. I still don't have difficulties in reading english texts, especially scientific texts, but I have only rare opportunities in talking to native english speakers.

[Taubnessel]

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[DrStefanie]

My first trip to the UK was in 12th grade with the English-LK. We went to London and (you wouldn't believe it) the weather was awesome... no rain just sunshine for a whole week!

After school I went to live in the USA for one year and work as an aupair. So I have seen quite some interesting places there...
I had to take a four day workshop in New York. It was so amazing seeing all those things like Statue of Liberty, Central Park...
Then I flew on to Atlanta, Georgia where I spend 12 month working for a family watching their kids. It was an awesome experience and I'm so glad that I did it...
During the aupair stay I went to California and Nevada for vacation with some aupair friends: first we went to San Francisco (the most marvellous city on the planet) by plane and spent three days packed with a lot of sight seeing. I immediately fell in love with that city!
Then we drove down the 101 to Los Angeles in a rental car.
On the way we stopped in Carmel by the beach. Carmel is just a very small village, with a very nice beach.
We lived in Hollywood, so we didn't have to walk far to see all the touristy stuff. But Hollywood isn't really the best place to live - it's dirty and messy, homeless people walk into fast food restaurants to beg for food and money and other people do drugs on the streets... I was kind of dissappointed - I had expected LA to be more glamourous.
Next we drove to Las Vegas, Nevada, where we spend three more days. We decided to drive through Death Valley, which was pretty cool, because where ever you looked there was just desert...! We stopped in a little "town" - I'm not even sure it has a name (it's just a store with a gas station and two houses in the middle of nowhere).
In LAs Vegas everything is colorful, and has blinking lights. We went into a casino to play on the slots and I even went out of the casino 5$ richer!
The coolest things in Vegas is the hotels. In the Venitian (I think) the ceiling looks like there are real clouds, and the Bellagio has a water fountain show that was quite impressive! We also did a sight seeing tour of the Grand Canyon - with a very small, fairly old airplane...

In april I'm gonna spend two weeks of vacation in Atlanta with my host family! I'm really looking forward to that...

Gotta go now, Steffi

[schlafmuetze]

Good evening everybody,

I have been to both countries, GB and USA. When I realized that my English was kind of bad in eleventh grade, I sent myself and my brother to Eastbourne, Southengland for 3 weeks to attend some English classes in 2003. Since there were tons of students like my bro an dme, we actually never talked in English. We lived at some old lady's house who never talked with us, either.

In 2004 I went to the USa, Connecticut was my final destination until 2005, when I got to move thousands of miles west to San Jose, California.

I am going back to California this summer ( can't wait!!) and I will go to England, as soon as I know what I will do there


Have a nice weekend!

[Flauta]

I also had the inverse situation: an exchange student here in may country. It's just strange to speak english and to find the vocabulary if all the people is speeking your native langugae and is unable to speak english.....but a good experience!

Sorry for OT