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!