First impressions on my new home

First weeks are always exciting and eventful - here's Spanish student Marta's story on her time so far in England...

After a hard day leaving my family, my friends and my country I started my adventure. When my host mum picked me up from the train station in Torquay she showed me the most important places in the town and guided me. At home there was another girl from TTPL, who made my arrival really comfortable with her and the host mum.

On Monday I had the first welcome meeting with Debra and Jo who explained about the country, the activities we would have on the next days, the job we were beginning next day… It was there I met the first girl, from Spain. Before meeting anyone I had a lot of expectations: who I’m going to meet, where from, how old will they be, what they would they look like… At the first contact with her I saw she was so cute and that we could be big friends. After the meeting we decided to take our first walk together around our new town. We saw the harbour, hundreds of shops and bars and the famous big wheel.

8.30 am on Tuesday and the alarm was sounding. First day of work. I took my time to freshen and be ready at 9.30 am when Jo was picked me up to go to work. In the evening there was a student social where we met other students, some that arrived like us, others already here a few months. It was such a nice evening where we had more contact with people from other countries. 

As with every Thursday we finished early at work because there is the student meeting. This time it was at Paignton Zoo. We all met at 2 pm to enter and walk around the zoo together. I didn’t expect it was going to be that big and with all the variety of animals we saw (monkeys, kangaroos, giraffes, elephants, reptiles, tigers, lions…). In the middle of our walk around the zoo it started raining a lot so we decided to go in to a bar and have some drinks and dinner together. I have to say that we had a really nice evening.


As you can read it has been an amazing first week where I felt really comfortable with everything. I really recommend you to come abroad and enjoy your stay in Devon. It doesn’t matter if it’s for a short or a long time because I’m sure you will love it and enjoy it as I’m doing!

A very special Birthday Party

Over one hundred people gathered at Torre Abbey for a traditional afternoon tea yesterday (June 9) to celebrate the Queen's Birthday. Felice, a German student who has been working with TTPL this week, has written a fantastic blog on the busy day! 

Let’s be honest, what better reason is there to throw an amazing traditional tea party than the 90^th birthday of  none other than Queen Elizabeth herself?

For this week’s student meeting TTPL members planned the celebration of this special event. Being part of the preparation team for the party, I can tell you that arranging all the bits and bobs for this day has been a once in a lifetime experience by itself.

On Thursday morning the team met up at Torre Abbey, which is a stunning historic building in Torquay surrounded by beautiful gardens. The weather was a bit foggy and grey, but nevertheless we decided to assemble the party equipment outdoors, embracing the optimistic thought that even if it had started raining, that would’ve just set the mood for a perfect British event. In the end I think we were all glad that it didn’t rain throughout the whole day.

There was a lot of work to be done, including preparing sandwiches and ‘cream tea’, blowing up balloons and decorating the whole place. Nobody could answer my question about the reason for cutting the crusts off the bread to create the perfect sandwich and cutting a hundred sandwiches didn’t help, but it tasted pretty good in the end. Listening to the English National Anthem and traditional music made the whole process even more special and authentic. It got a bit hectic in the end, but we managed to have everything settled in time and when the clock struck two and the other students arrived the real fun began.

The students enjoyed the variety of English cakes next to the typical ‘cuppa tea’ and there was even a small gift given to everyone, which is always exciting. I saw some people around me taking Instagram pictures, which I can totally understand, given the ideal photo opportunities. For those people who couldn’t get enough pictures taken, there was a little set up of silly hats and masks of Queen Elizabeth and Philip and a Union jack covered picture frame. I’m not too sure if the royal couple would be flattered seeing some of the pictures taken by students that day, but they would certainly be amused… and we were, too.

It is always nice to see the other students at these weekly meetings and to have the opportunity to chat about everyone’s work placements, experiences and plans for the next weeks. TTPL Queen’s Birthday party was a particularly successful and unique gathering and the amount of work and time put in the preparations were totally worth it.