I attend the 3^rd year at Liceo Linguistico, so I have been on two study trips abroad so far: I went to Valencia last year and to Edinburgh last month. I’m going to talk about these two trips in this article, comparing and contrasting the two experiences.

First of all, we stayed in a family on both the trips. I preferred the Scottish family that hosted us: the lady was very nice, talkative and helpful; she gave us a lot of good food, the house was quite big, we had quite a big bedroom with our own personal bathroom and also a small living room with a TV set. On the other hand, the lady who hosted us in Valencia was never at home, we had to cook, and our bedroom was so small that the beds occupied almost all the space! In addition, there were eight people in the flat, it was too small, crowded and there was only one bathroom. The only positive aspect was that the flat was nearer the centre than the house in Edinburgh.

I preferred the language course that we had in Valencia. It was a bit boring at times, but it was very useful

Secondly, on the one hand the language course in Valencia was very good and serious: we had useful lessons and we improved our Spanish very much because we did a lot of conversation and grammar, too. On the other hand, the language course in Edinburgh was almost useless: we seldom had any conversation or studied grammar, but we just played games, visited museums with our local teachers or went to the Royal Mile for some outdoor activities. So, I preferred the language course that we had in Valencia. It was a bit boring at times, but it was very useful.

Moreover, our ways of sightseeing were a bit different. In Valencia there were fewer things to see, but we visited them slowly, so it was a bit long and boring. On the contrary, in Edinburgh there were more sights to see (even though we didn’t visit them all), and we visited them in the morning, so we spent less time sightseeing, we were less tired and we were also free to visit things on our own in small groups, so we enjoyed it more because we could concentrate our attention on the things we were most interested in. In addition, I liked the places we visited in Edinburgh more, and I found them more interesting.

The last thing I would like to talk about is leisure activities. In Valencia we had just one evening activity, but I liked it very much: we went to a typical restaurant and we ate paella. I enjoyed myself with my class and I liked the activity. On the other hand, in Edinburgh we had two evening activities: the first was a guided underground night walking tour, (I understood very little and it was a bit frightening); the second one was a choice between two options: going to the cinema to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D or going bowling. I liked the leisure activities of both trips.

In conclusion, to my mind there are positive and negative aspects in both these study trips, and I liked them both.