{"id":2220,"date":"2024-03-22T11:54:14","date_gmt":"2024-03-22T10:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/site.educa.madrid.org\/ies.delibes.mejorada\/?p=2220"},"modified":"2024-04-17T02:15:44","modified_gmt":"2024-04-17T00:15:44","slug":"studying-7000-kilometres-away-from-mejorada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.educa.madrid.org\/ies.delibes.mejorada\/index.php\/2024\/03\/22\/studying-7000-kilometres-away-from-mejorada\/","title":{"rendered":"Studying 7,000 kilometres away from Mejorada"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Lorenzo, one of our students at the IES Miguel Delibes in Mejorada, applied for the scholarship Amancio Ortega, and he was successful. He is spending the year In Canada, in a small town called Souris, on the Atlantic coast. We are very happy to have had such a mature student in our high school and we hope to welcome him back next year.<\/p>\n

We thank him for his kindness, time, and availability in talking with us. We thank his mum, Margarita, too for having provided us with the photos and for collaborating in every way possible. We thank them for agreeing to collaborate in this interview, whose purpose is to offer the students of Mejorada del Campo a testimony of a special student who can be a model for other students in our secondary school.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Last year I was just another student at IES Miguel Delibes, but this year I am studying on the other side of the world in a Canadian town called Souris, on the Atlantic coast, and living a new life. While it is not easy to spread your wings and take off from not only your family but your world and everything you know, it is absolutely worth it. Here I’m going to tell you a little bit about what it’s like to venture off to study abroad:<\/p>\n

Before co\"\"ming to Canada, I started acquiring my level of English thanks to studying at the Europa school, which was bilingual, and then I continued with it at the IES Delibes. In addition, it helped me to have gone camping for a couple of weeks in England during several summers. Without a doubt, the most effective way to learn English is to go out and expose yourself to an environment where the language is native.<\/p>\n

As you can imagine, living in an environment so culturally different from your home country has its difficulties: you have to adapt to the local customs (dinner at 6 o’clock) and to the new school (having 4 subjects and 2 semesters). Personally, the skills that helped me the most to adapt were a great positive attitude and being open-minded and outgoing. From the beginning I tried to meet as many people as I could and get involved as much as possible in the school and the community.<\/p>\n

Difficulties, as challenging as they may be and sometimes hard to face, are what make you who you are and that is why I have matured a lot since I arrived in Canada. My way of thinking has evolved in many ways as I have been exposed to so many new opinions and points of view from people I have met, and I know myself much better.<\/p>\n

My heart dropped to the floor when I was told from the people who granted me the scholarship that my destination to live for the next 10 months was a town of 1000 people on an island in Canada. When they talk to you about being an exchange student, you imagine a huge Am\"\"erican high school, with its football team and its cheerleaders (what we see in the movies). But my reality was going to be different and that shocked me a lot. Since I went with no expectations, I found a million good things that I had not even imagined. The kindness of the people is amazing, the whole town is like a big family where everyone helps each other. I was welcomed at the high school as one more and they helped me in whatever I needed. On the other side, I could not be more comfortable with the family I am living with; for me, they are already my second parents.<\/p>\n

Earlier I told you about the difficulties to be faced, and I will tell you what mine were, so you can get an idea. The first 2 days of high school were very hard because until I joined the volleyball team, I didn’t start making friends. The teachers were very nice and helped me a lot but none of the kids talked to me or made an effort to get to know me, so the first day I had to sit alone in the cafeteria at lunchtime. Facing that was a bit hard since I expected people to be curious about me (after all, I’m the only student from abroad in that high school), but as time went by and I did my part, I ended up making friends and my Canadian social life couldn’t be going better right now.<\/p>\n

The opportunity to come here to study was given to me by the Amancio Ortega scholarships, which paid for everything. I\"\"n case anyone is interested in getting one, here is my advice. Life is short and it rewards you if you dare to experiment and explore, if you are hesitating between getting into the scholarship selection process or not, do it because who knows, maybe a year from now you will be celebrating Christmas in a huge house in Canada or the United States surrounded by your new family living a dream life. The possibilities are endless but the opportunities are not, so play your cards right and go for it whenever you can. These scholarships are looking for people who are willing to step out of their comfort zone. For the interview, the most important advice is: be yourself and be relaxed. Then, whatever will be, will be.<\/p>\n

The academic level of the high school here, at least in Canada, is much lower than the demands we are subjected to in Spain. In what would be equivalent to the first year of post compulsory education in Spain (1\u00ba Bachillerato), here I am seeing things that I saw in the third or fourth year of ESO. In addition, the way in which studies are approached here is more open and more understanding of the goals that each one of us may have. This seems to me to be a plus for education here and something they do better is to have that flexibility with students; if you don’t want to go to college, the courses you can take have nothing to do with someone who does want to go to college. Also, there are a lot more resources available at these high schools: there are workshops to study how to be a car mechanic, carpentry workshops, different labs, and even a cooking workshop. One thing I don’t like very much, however, is that the standards are perhaps too low. To give you an idea, the average math test in my class is usually around 9\/10. Personally, I think that the average should not be so high because it seems to me an indicator that the exams are not difficult enough. After all, in that way you can’t tell the good students from the excellent students.\"\"<\/p>\n

At the end of the day, it is when you dare to explore the unknown, to think about what you are going through, and to discover who you really are. So why not take a step forward and experience all that?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lorenzo, one of our students at the IES Miguel Delibes in Mejorada, applied for the scholarship Amancio Ortega, and he was successful. He is spending the year In Canada, in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,1],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-2220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ingles","category-sin-categoria"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":null,"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"Cuenta Depingles ies delibes mejorada","author_link":"https:\/\/site.educa.madrid.org\/ies.delibes.mejorada\/index.php\/author\/cuenta_depingles-ies-delibes-mejorada\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"Ingl\u00e9s<\/a> Sin categor\u00eda<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"Lorenzo, one of our students at the IES Miguel Delibes in Mejorada, applied for the scholarship Amancio Ortega, and he was successful. He is spending the year In Canada, in ...","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.educa.madrid.org\/ies.delibes.mejorada\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.educa.madrid.org\/ies.delibes.mejorada\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.educa.madrid.org\/ies.delibes.mejorada\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.educa.madrid.org\/ies.delibes.mejorada\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.educa.madrid.org\/ies.delibes.mejorada\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2220"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/site.educa.madrid.org\/ies.delibes.mejorada\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2380,"href":"https:\/\/site.educa.madrid.org\/ies.delibes.mejorada\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220\/revisions\/2380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.educa.madrid.org\/ies.delibes.mejorada\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.educa.madrid.org\/ies.delibes.mejorada\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.educa.madrid.org\/ies.delibes.mejorada\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2220"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.educa.madrid.org\/ies.delibes.mejorada\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=2220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}