Language: English
Country: Scotland
Dates: 28.6. - 16.8. 2016 (7 weeks)
Type of stay: short-term work
Language learning and cultural experience: I was working on the farm in the countryside of Scotland for 7 weeks in the summer. I was picking strawberries and rapsberries almost every day. During my working hours I had to speak English with other workers but mainly with quality-controllors people and other responsible people on the farm. Because they were native Scottish, they also had very strong accent which made understanding more difficult. Even my English level was pretty good, I had really problems during the first weeks to understand. In my free time I travelled around Scotland with my friends. We also tried hitchhiking, which was beside cheap travelling great experience to practice my English. Later I got used to their scottish accent. But sometimes they didn´t understand me, because I do not have this scottish accent and I had to spell some words in order to understand. My last trip was to the capital city Edinburgh and it was during the most popular festival "Fringe". There were a lot of artist in the streets, so for me it was really nice opportunity to experience their culture through art, music, theatre. I wish I could come back to Scotland and visit more of this amazing country.
Country: Ukraine
Dates: 7.10. - 14.10. 2016 (1 week)
Type of stay: festival with choir, staying as a guest in family
Language learning and cultural experience: In October I had opportunity to visit this interesting country. I went there with my choir I sing in, because we were participated in the festival of spiritual music. I stayed as a guest in one family and spent with them a lot of time. As for the language, it was a little bit complicated. They could not speak English very well and I didn´t know anything from Ukrainian. But it is still Slavic language so I saw there some similarities with Czech. When they spoke very slowly I could understand the context. So they taught me a little bit of Ukrainian and I taught them English. Sometimes our communication was funny. Because I was a part of the family for one week I experienced their culture a lot. They prepared for me typical dishes, we talked about traditions, music and other things related to Ukraine. With my choir we had several concerts on several different places in Ukraine and that was definitely also very interesting culture experience. During my free time I went out with my ukrainian friends and they showed me many interesting places. During this one week, which is relatively short period, I learnt so much about this culture. People are not so rich in this country, but they are happy and they appreciate all the little things. So it made me to think more about my country and what I have in my life.
Language: English, Spanish
Country: Spain
Dates: 25.1. - 25. 6. 2017 (5 months)
Type of stay: Erasmus studying programme
Language learning and cultural experience: Going for Erasmus was one of the best choices I made in my life. I decided to go to Spain because I´ve always wanted to visit this country and also I wanted to learn Spanish. I study at the University of Valencia teaching English. So all my classes are in English. I also have English-speaking flatmates so I have to use English every day here. Definitely I have to say that I improved (and still improving) my speaking skills. As for the Spanish language, I learned basics and actually I understand more or less everything when people speak slowly. But still I have problems with speaking, it takes me a lot of time to create a sentence in Spanish. But I will continue learning this language when I come back to my country and I will take some course. I think I need to learn more grammar and more vocabulary. I can see the cultural experience everywhere. And not only Spanish culture. I met so many people from all over the world so I experienced so many cultures here. During my stay in Spain I also visited other places, for example Andalusia. And I can see that even in one country there are some differences in the way of living and also in the language. In Spain they have several dialects, in Valencia there is very spread. For me as a foreigner it is very difficult to understand Valencian dialect. But everyone here can also speak Spanish. I am sure that this experience abroad was very big for and I´ve changed my opinion and view on life.
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