When your friends graduate first — weekends and goodbyes on a 20-week course in Clark
Book a long course and something happens that rarely comes up in a consultation. The friends you live with leave before you do.
Chih-Jen, a Taiwanese student on a 20-week TALK4 Hybrid A course, wrote in September about how the lessons actually run. This second piece is about what happens outside them: the weekend market and festival, the table-tennis table, and classmates about to graduate.
Chih-Jen's first piece — a class that keeps you talking
Weekend mornings at the market
"On weekend mornings I like to wander round the traditional market near the school and take in real everyday Filipino life."
What makes this good is that it is not a tourist site. You are walking among people doing their shopping. You ask a price, ask what something is, take your change. It is where short, practical English changes hands most often.
Evening at the food and music festival
"In the evening I went with everyone to the food and music festival to eat, drink and listen to music — a brilliant way to unwind."
Notice the word "everyone". Classmates plan the weekend together and go together. Yen-Ju Pai, another Taiwanese student, went to the same festival and wrote about it too.
Inside the school — preparing presentations, and the table-tennis table
"At school we get together to prepare presentations and discuss, and what I look forward to most after class is table tennis with my classmates: the time spent swinging wildly at the table is always full of laughter."
TALK4 Hybrid A is four one-to-one periods and two group periods a day. Group classes are capped at eight and built around presentations and discussion, so time spent preparing together before class happens on its own. Put friends of different nationalities round one table and the preparation is in English too.
The table-tennis room is part of the school's facilities. Table tennis is a game of short words and a lot of laughing. "Nice shot", "One more", "Your serve" — English a new student can join in with on day one.
When friends graduate
"Seeing the classmates I have lived and studied with about to graduate makes me really sad to see them go — but it is exactly why I have made good friends here across nationalities."
That sentence is the heart of this piece.
Most Philippine language schools do not run on terms. At TALK, too, every student starts in a different week, and dormitory check-in and check-out happen every Saturday. So every week somebody arrives and every week somebody leaves. A four-week student sees that once or twice. A twenty-week student lives through it many times. At first you are the one waving friends off; before long you are the one showing new arrivals round.
The sadness is evidence in itself. It means you became close enough to miss them — and those friends were not from your own country. That is why "good friends across nationalities" is not a throwaway line.
Looking back
"Looking back, this time abroad, full of fun and full of friendship, has given me the best memories!"
If you are thinking about a long course
The usual worry about friends is "will I make any?" People going for longer have a second question: "what if my friends leave before me?"
The answer is in Chih-Jen's piece. At a school where people change every week, the one who sees friends off soon becomes the one who welcomes new ones. Going through that again and again is part of what a long stay gives you.
If you want the details
Enrolment, start dates and quotations for Talk Academy are handled by our partner agencies in each country. Tell them your level honestly, and how many weeks you can take.