Ellinor

 

Wow, 9th week has come to an end. That means only 4 weeks until my Cambridge exam but also until I go home. Crazy!

 

This week started off like many other Mondays, I finished at 11. After class I went to the gym with my roomie Margot. After lunch I spent my afternoonat the beach, it was quite hot outside so I only stayed for about 2 hours. In the evening I went to Lincoln Road with Margot and Fosca, two of my roommates. We enjoyed a nice cold drink and then we went to the cinema to watch Despicable Me 3. When we bought our tickets they offered us seats in the VIP lounge for only 1$ extra so we tried it. Turned out to be a really cool cinema-experience. We all got comfortable armchairs and access to a bar just outside the showroom. I don't know about you, but I have never had a Margarita in the cinema before...but it was very nice ;-) The movie was funny, so now we might live longer after all laughing. When we got home we met our new roommate Anna, she comes from Russia.

    

On Tuesday I had class until 17:05. Had some time to call my parents on Skype and just relax for a bit. We had another Cambridge test this day, in order to prepare for the most difficult parts. Only about 4 weeks left until the big exam. In the evening, after barbeque dinner, I went to Target, Downtown, with Fosca to do a little bit of shopping. It's like Walmart, which I explained earlier this summer, it's like the swedish "Gekås" in Ullared. It's big, cheap and has almost everything. But we only go there because the ordinary supplies we buy at Walgreens, our local supermarket on Miami Beach, is so expensive, so it's actually worth it to take an 5$ Uber across the bridge to go to Target. My evening ended with a couple of episodes from That 70's show. It's just hilarious. 

 

Wednesday classes ended at 12:35, a good time. Then I worked at the front desk for an hour. In the afternoon me, Fosca and Margot went to west Miami to get our nails done at the Nail Bar. We found a great deal on Groupon, 25$ for gel manicure + regular pedicure. It was quite far away but worth it. We'll see how long it will last, might have to redo it again before I go home ;-) When we came back to Miami Beach I went off with the "adult" group (25+) to Montys bar at South point. It was a great place, located right next to the bay and had a pretty nice deal in their happy hour with good drinks and food. A lot of students were there, mostly from Switzerland and Italy. After a couple of hours the tiredness took over so I decided to go back to campus.Rebecca, staffmember at EF, introduced me to the local bus which only costs 25 cents to go from south point up to EF, which is about 24 blocks. Uber is around 3$ so I saved some money there!

Thursday was an ordinary day. Class didn't start until 12:45, so I had a nice sleep in before breakfast and had time to go the gym. We had lessons until 5, with another test. But I did well, could've done certain parts better but it all depends on you daily shape, energylevel etc. I just hope that I will have a good day the 25th of August on the real exam. After class and dinner, I went to Lincoln road and did some shopping. I had a coupon at Victoria Secret, which was about to be invalid, so ofcourse I had to use it ;-) That's about it for this day. I was so extremely tired when I got back so went straight to bed, also because I knew that we would have another test on Friday morning. We had been talking about going out to club Ora, but it just felt like a bad idea in the moment. 

 

The exam we did on Friday morning went great! To pass the Cambridge Advanced Examination, you need to get minimum 60% in total, which includes all taks: Listening, Writing, Reading, Speaking and Use of English. I got 73%. So either you pass or you don't, there aren't any grades other than pass. But the higher score you get, the higher level will you get on your certification. So I'm aiming towards 80% which would place me in a level of CPE, Cambridge Proffessional English. But the test is very difficult so it's hard to prepare. But we'll see!

After class I spent an hour on the beach before working at the front desk at EF. It was a quiet afternoon. In the evening I was in charge to take a group of students to the night's baseballgame: Miami Marlins vs Cinncinati Reds. 24 people, but no one disappeared ;-) The game started off quite easy, the Reds had a good start and in a moment it seemed to be another loss for the Marlins. But then in the middle they turned the game around and won with 7-4! It was great to see them win this time! This game was about 3 hours, like the last time, but it was definately more exciting this time.

 

Saturdaymorning I worked for a while at the front desk and knocked on doors to make sure that the students who were checking out actually was awake. After brunch me, Fosca and Margot took and Uber to Zoo Miami!

 It took around an hour to get there but we had a funy Uberdriver so we forgot about time. The Zoo was bigger then I had expected. It had a lot of different areas with animals from Florida, Asia, Amazonas, Africa and Australia. It was cool. I din't like the parts with a lot of snakes and spiders, because I just don't like to see them, even if it's behind glass. But i liked the turtles, koalas, elephants, lions, kangaroos etc. A lot of different animals. We spent about 3 hours walking around at the Zoo. In the beginning it was just a light rain and a great temperature, but after a while the sun broke out and the temperature got higher and the light rain were replaced with a higher humidity. But we enjoyed our day! When we got back to school, me and Fosca had dinner and then we decided to take a walk along the beach. We walked all the way up to Ocean drive. The sky was purple and blue and in a far distance we could see a thunderstorm coming in. But we had time to go for a swim in the sea and relax on the beach, no rain came. After a while we went to Pink Berry and bought some yoghurt icecream before heading back to campus. 

 

That's all for now! I wish you all a great week!

 

Over and out from Miami Beach

//Ellinor