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STUDENTS

As I wave goodbye to my final group of the season I feel vaguely sad. Being a Local Organiser of foreign students in this area brings, very much, its own rewards as well as its own heartaches.

My last group that returned was a group of French kids who, on the whole, acted in a not dissimilar fashion to ours. However, the "interest factor" has to come from the east European kids who give a whole new meaning to the word "committed".

A group of Moldavian students headed by a very formidable female teacher who would not have looked out of place at the front of the Red Army asked the most impossible of questions and then looked at me when I did not know the answer.

They had asked for a guide to show them around the area after their lessons and each night I met the guide and dropped him straight off at the nearest pub exhausted and depleted.

Each morning their coach "swept" around the areas of Portslade and Southwick collecting them and taking them to school. We gave them a time to be at each point and surly thirteen-year-olds questioned me as to why the coach was late every morning! (by late let's talk three or four minutes here)

(Sorry, I am used to the French, who when you say coach for 8.30, saunter happily along at 8.45 oblivious to the fact that their coach is parked on double yellow lines and they need to negotiate rush-hour traffic as their door is on the "wrong side" for driving in England. At this point, may I say a heartfelt thank you to all the drivers who gave both me and my students a wide berth along the Old Shoreham Road as we tried to board the coach. The students just CAN NOT grasp the fact that you do not form a large group in the middle of a dual carriageway and finish your conversation before getting on the coach. For my part, I stand in the middle of the road between coach and passing cars, praying that I wont be scooped up by a car in the outside lane and dropped off somewhere in Brighton!)

The other incident that comes to mind is how the Polish group got off the boat at Dover and made straight for Shoreham in Kent not Shoreham by Sea. They drove their coach through small villages and tiny hamlets all the time keeping their eyes open for a "Halford car park" and "the sea". They eventually found a Halfords next to a river and demanded of an innocent passer-by why the sea looked so small and where the host families were!

Three hours later, I was left alone in the car park still awaiting these students. Finally at 1.30am I got a call from them along the Kingsway in Hove saying their drivers had run out of driving time and they were "bedding down" for the night. At 7.30 the next morning, bemused McDonalds staff were hurriedly cooking 98 Big Macs for me to take to them for their breakfast.

But the "piece de resistance" of this year has to be the "gerbil incident" where suddenly each and every French teenager thought it would be "cool" to buy a gerbil.

The first one was found by a host mother when she went to put clothes in the airing cupboard the gerbil opened a sleepy eye at her when she tried to place the towels on top of him. The second one came to light in a shoebox having tried to shred part of the shoe for bedding for the babies that had been born. The final straw was the one who climbed out of the rucksack during class, clambered over tiny feet and landed near the teacher. Needless to say, the pet shop owner had eleven gerbils (and three babies) returned to him rather in a hurry!

So as I make my last claim for expenses and prepare to book classrooms for next year, I admit to feeling slightly lost. Doing my shopping at Sainsbury's will never be the same this winter, as I shall always be looking in the car park for a coach to appear and eager faces to begin their tutorials here. I shall make the most of my few months off as groups start arriving again the beginning of January.

Oh, and by the way, if anyone can tell me the length of the carpet in the Great Hall at Windsor I would be very grateful. Irana, my Moldavian Leader, is still expecting the answer ...

by Jackie Verrall