A Day in the Life of...

Hello, my name is Canna. I’m a 14-year-old girl from Hong Kong and I am now living in the boarding house with students from all over the world.

There are students from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Italy and many other countries – even from Dubai! Unlike other traditional strict schools, our house parents are really nice and they cook us delicious food, which I never get bored of. They chat with us and sometimes we even play games or watch movies together. We all live like a family. Apart from that, teachers and local students are all very friendly and sociable. I remember when I first came, all the girls from my year came to me and wanted to know more about me.

On school days, I get up at 7:30 am and get ready for school. I usually have toasts for breakfast at 8:15am but we can also have cereals, fruits and yogurts, etc. We can even have cooked breakfast for Sunday mornings! You can also bring packed lunch to school but I prefer to order at school, as I like hot food. Every morning, I leave the boarding house at 8:45am for school because the school is only 2 minutes walk away from the boarding house and we need to be there by 8:50am.

After school, we usually have homework class at school until 5:00pm and there is always a teacher who supervises us to help us when we have difficulties, but sometimes I’ll have afterschool lessons like circuit training. After that, we sometimes go to Starbucks to relax after a hardworking day or we can stay at the boarding house to do whatever we like.  If I haven’t finished my homework in homework class, I’ll normally do it after dinner with other friends. You might think ‘What if we don’t understand some questions? Who can help us?’ Once, when I was doing my English homework and I didn’t understand a poem, nearly everyone in the boarding house including our house parents were discussing the question with me and trying to help me to figure out the answer. So, I never get worried about my homework because you can get help at anytime.

We usually have dinner at 6:00pm and we can choose our own dinner before the week. I have tried lots of different food, such as Italian, Chinese, Vietnamese and they all taste amazing. Sometimes we have desserts like apple crumble and I’ve even helped to make it! Occasionally, we’ll have special dinner nights like ’Movie Night’ when we eat chips and many different finger foods, while watching a DVD that we choose together from Blockbuster. Last week, we had ‘Dominos’ Night’ when we choose 4 pizzas by our own from Dominos and then grouped ourselves into 4 groups and played a Wii bowling competition – my team won!

In the evenings we can relax in the common room, play Wii or simply chill and chat with friends from all over the world. Friends from the local area can visit us till 9:00pm, which is our curfew time. On weekdays, my age group has to be in bed by 9:30pm and lights off at 10:00pm and the older ones are 30 minutes later. On weekends we can sleep 30 minutes later than usual.

We all have different activities to do for the whole week. I go to ballet lessons on Monday and Thursday evenings and Eunice, a friend of mine, plays hockey on Wednesday evenings. For weekends, we sometimes go to the gym, go swimming or even go shopping in Cardiff, as it only takes 15 minutes to go to Cardiff by train. Sometimes our house parents organise activities for our weekends such as go karting or visiting different places. I really enjoy my days in the boarding house.