Thanks for a great time...!

Elvira, one of our students this summer, only returned home a few days ago after finishing her English course but she misses London and all the friends she made here.

Thanks for sending these pictures... and don't forget you are welcome here at any time because Language in London is your home in London!

Elvira with Ian, one of her teachers.

Elvira with Alejandra in the office.

A gang of students in Regents Park.

Friends in class.

More friends in class.

Stuart Rubenstein
Principal

Where were you in 1998?

Just received these photos from Pavel, a student who was at the school in 1998. If you are in one of the pictures... please let me know!


The person talking in the second picture is Greg... he was a teacher and also arranged the weekly frisbee games.... where are you now Greg????
If you have any photos of your time at Language in London / Camden College of English please send them by email and I'll put them up on the blog.

Stuart Rubenstein
Principal

Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside...

Alejandra, the hardest working person on earth, spends every day answering student emails, arranging accommodation and helping everyone. For those who don't know, she originally came to London as an English language student in 1998 when the school was called Camden College of English.
She has been working here now for 6 years and has helped the school grow and develop. I have to say that Ale loves London but there is one other place in England that is also in her heart and that is Brighton.
Every year, Ale takes a group of students down to Brighton to swim in the sea, visit the Grand Pavillion, eat fish and chips and have fun.
Here are some pictures from last weekend's day trip... and it shows that learning English is not just about sitting in a classroom but about trying everything!

So... take a leaf out of Ale's book and be positive and you will have a fantastic time when you come here to study.

Stuart Rubenstein
Principal

Follow Ricki!

The simple advice for all students this summer is FOLLOW RICKI!

Ricki (centre in the white t-shirt), who has just finished his first year at Nottingham university, is working at the school in July and August arranging all the social activities. Here he is with some of the new students at a welcome party.

This week there will be a lot of FOLLOW RICKI activities, including a walking tour of London, a visit to the law courts at the Old Bailey, a picnic in Trafalgar Square listening to an opera, and of course... a pub crawl!

After a week of rain, it looks like the weather for the next few days is going to be good, so I'm sure there will also be some football and cricket in the park. But whatever you do, don't forget to FOLLOW RICKI!

Stuart Rubenstein
Principal

15 - love

It's summer and that means Rob's annual pilgrimage to Wimbledon - the home of tennis. Our group of students queued for three hours to get in ("Rob! How much longer? Rob! Will we get in? Rob! Rob!").

After all the hard work (standing and talking to other students!) they finally got in and saw two different games and had a fantastic time. These are the memories of London that will stay with these guys forever... a long time after they have forgotten the vocabulary and grammar we've taught them!

Wonderful, wonderful Zone 4

As I spend an hour on the tube every day getting to and from work (zone 4 to zone 1 and back again .... for my zonally obsessed friends!), I use the two 30-minute portions of undeground space and time as well as possible.

Most days I just get out a book and celebrate the opportunity to read in peace. When I get home it's bath time for Ben, eating together, reading him a story and then collapsing! So the tube journey really is my only chance to read.

The temptation is to pick up one of the free papers The London Paper, London Lite, or Metro - but they're all awful and to be honest, there's only so much I need to know about Amy Winehouse, Britney and all the other celebrity disaster cases.

This month I've enjoyed two very different books... firstly, "The Damned United" by David Peace. It's a fictional account of the time when Brian Clough was manager of Leeds United in the 70s. It's much more than a trite football story and I highly recommend it.

A few days ago I finished Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" and I'm still absorbing and digesting it. As a journalist, she has a wonderful way of linking history and economics in Chile, Argentina, China, Bolivia, Mexico, South Africa, Poland, Russia, the UK, Israel and Lebanon before leading us to Iraq, Tsunami hit Asia and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Her analysis focuses on free market shock policies and Milton Friedman's Chicago School of economics and leaves you in no doubt of the harm that has been caused in every corner of the world. Give it a go!

The last word has to be... how lucky I am to have this special time on the underground every day. If I lived close to the school then I would never have the time or space to read!

Stuart Rubenstein
Principal

No England, No Stress

I am enjoying the Euro 2008 competiton so much. The football is quite good (not amazing, not terrible) but more than anything there is no stress. I don't really care who wins and I don't really care who loses. Penalties are fun and there's even a bit of pleasure watching the distraught, devastated fans of the country that has been knocked out.

This is football without England, without all the media hype, without all the pressure and without the expectations. And I love it!

If your country is still in the competition... good luck!

Stuart Rubenstein
Prinicpal

The most dangerous game in the world!

Reading this blog, you will know that I love football. But there is nothing better than watching or playing cricket during the summer. Students are always telling us that the game is boring... that it's only for the upper classes... that it has something to do with the British Empire...

Well, many years ago I stopped trying to convert people. If that's what you think, well, that's what you think!

Fortunately, I have somebody at the school who I can chat to about cricket and that's our Director of Studies, Rob.
Last weekend he managed to break his arm playing!

And don't make the mistake of confusing cricket with croquet
















These are very different games!!

Stuart Rubenstein
Principal

Blog to blog

I promised more news about the Spanish group... well, you can follow what they are doing on their trip on their London Blog. It's in Catalan but there are enough photos if you have problems with the language.

Looking at the pictures of the red phone boxes, horseguards and buses you'll see that it is unmistakeably London.



The best part, of course, is the smiling faces.

Stuart Rubenstein
Principal

Romeos and Juliets

Here are our Romeos and Juliets from Viladecavalls near Barcelona. These students are in London because they won a competition arranged by the Catalan government to produce a project on the Shakespeare play.

They'll spend two weeks here studying and speaking as much English as possible. They are also going to visit Bath, Stonehenge, Oxford and Shakespeare's birthplace Stratford-upon-Avon.

Next week we are hoping that they are going to perform some scenes from Romeo and Juliet... more to follow on that!

Stuart Rubenstein
Principal

Everyone is welcome!

This week we've had a wonderful English course for 15 psychoanalysts from Germany (pictured with teachers Rebecca and Ash), preparing for their annual conference in London. Studying six hours a day, they looked at academic papers, presentations, social English and a bit of grammar. And they finished the course with an analysis of Shakespeare's King Lear before going to the Globe to see the play.

Some of them attended last year, so it was a pleasure to welcome back some familiar faces as well as meeting some new people.

No two weeks are ever the same in a language school, as we say goodbye to the psychoanalysts we are preparing to welcome over 30 seventeen-year-olds from Spain on Monday!

Moans about Zones

Why are all our students so obsessed with London's zones?

I have no idea about the different areas of Madrid, Rio or Seoul. I couldn't tell you which part of Tokyo is the best to live in or where I should stay in Berlin. Is it good to be in the north of Rome or the south? I haven't got a clue!

And yet our students are always asking us for accommodation which MUST be in zone 1 or 2. Do they really know London?

So, maybe what everyone needs is an explanation of the zones!

Firstly, I have never met a Londoner who has ever mentioned zones. Seriously, if you ask someone from London where they live the answer will be: Finchley or Ealing or Clapham or Hackney. Nobody will ever say, "I live in zone 3."

The zones are just concentric circles designed by London underground to make it easier to have different fares for the underground and buses. Nothing more and nothing less.

And yet our students are convinced that zone 1 is heaven and zone 5 is hell!!

London is an enormous city, the biggest in Europe, and it is not designed to be nice in the middle and worse the further out you move!

There are some lovely parts of zone 2 and some which you wouldn't want to stay in and I can say the same about zone 4 (where I live!).

I'm sure that what our students really mean is that they don't want a long journey or to use public transport... but that's part of the fun of being in such a big city. Or maybe they think that the "centre" of London is the only place to visit. Of course, London makes things even more confusing by having two centres; the City and the West End.

The best way of thinking of London is to imagine lots of little villages squashed together. Each village is self-contained and has its shops, pubs and restaurant... and each has its own very special atmosphere. So, Chelsea, Hoxton, Westminster, Hampstead, Brixton and Golders Green are all parts of London that you may or may not want to visit or stay in... but not because of the zone but because of what makes them interesting.

My advice... stop moaning about zones, stop thinking that London begins and ends at Piccadilly Circus and fall in love with this great big, messy, noisy, busy, wonderful city!!

Stuart Rubenstein
Principal

London is so cheap!

Are you visiting London this summer? Maybe you are coming to the UK as a tourist or to take an English course at a school like Language in London.

When you pack your suitcase... don't bring with you all the stereotypes about how expensive this city is. The first thing to remember is that all the major museums are free! This is our present to all visitors to London. You can go to the British Museum, British Library, Science Museum, Tate Gallery, National Gallery, Natural History Museum... and not spend one penny!

You should also go to one night of the BBC Proms. This is the biggest musical festival in the world and takes place in the beautiful Royal Albert Hall. Every night there is a different concert, mostly classical, and it costs only £5.

And if you want a taste of real English culture then go to the Shakespeare Globe theatre, where tickets are also only £5. This summer you can see King Lear, A Midsummer's Night Dream and the Merry Wives of Windsor.

As a passionate Londoner, I want our students to experience all these things, which is why our Cultural Experience programme is a language course where all the lessons take place in London's museums and galleries... a great way to be a student and a tourist at the same time.

I'll keep you posted with reports of all the great things we will arrange for our students this summer as extra social activities.

Regards,
Stuart Rubenstein
Principal

Happy Birthday!!!!

Yes, this week we celebrate our first anniversary at 42 Bloomsbury Street. For those who don't know, the school used to be called Camden College of English and was in a small building in north London for nearly 20 years. In June 2007 we moved to our elegant new home in central London and changed the name of the school to Language in London.
From the first day we moved here I knew we had made the right decision. There's more space, enormous windows making the rooms very bright, a lovely garden backing on to the British Museum, a spacious internet cafe for our students...

You can see more photos of our English language school in London here - and, of course, you are welcome to visit at any time!

Stuart Rubenstein
Principal

Chelsea

This is all I can write... last night was soul-destroying... to see John Terry, Mr. Chelsea, slip when taking his penalty was... well... it was... I can't describe it!

For the next week I'm not going to read a newspaper or watch the news. I don't want to hear anything about the match.

I am going to concentrate only on family and Language in London. Nothing else!

So... don't talk to me about football.

Stuart Rubenstein
Principal

Speaking English... the bubble, the logo...

It's now one year since our new Language in London logo was designed. And I still love it.The speech bubble is a simple idea but it expresses perfectly the idea of a language school... this is a place to SPEAK!

In every room of the school there are bubbles painted in different colours and every room there's a lot of talking... so they must work.

Stuart Rubenstein
Principal

English UK

Yesterday was the AGM and Spring conference for English UK, the national association of accredited English language centres.

It's always good to meet up with representatives from other schools and share thoughts and ideas about our "industry". The biggest discussion was on new visa requirements for students from outside the European Union, which will become law in 2009.

I also attended interesting sessions on the student market in Turkey and Russia.

It made me realise how important it is to spend some time away from my desk. I usually spend far too many hours every day staring at my computer. Time to change my work habits!

Stuart Rubenstein
Principal

Old Friends #2

Maria (standing at the back) was in my class in '98 and visited London last week. We met up for breakfast in Primrose Hill but didn't have much of a chance to talk because Ben wanted to run everywhere.

When I look at some of our competition in London - the big schools which are usually part of a chain, with 200 or more students at any one time and lots and lots of teachers, I wonder what it is like to study or work in such a place.

The simple question is... if you come back to visit in ten years time will anybody remember you? At Language in London we believe that the school is part of the experience and not just the place where you study.

I know that if I was choosing somewhere to study, I'd prefer small and friendly to a school that is like a great big corporate language factory!

Stuart Rubenstein
Principal

Old Friends

On Friday we had a visit from two friends from Moscow, Olga and Marina. When they first came to the school about 8 years ago they were inseparable friends and it's good to see that nothing has changed!

They missed seeing Rob, their "old" teacher, because he was climbing in Wales... so they will have to come back and say hello again soon!

Stuart Rubenstein
Principal

Proud to be Blue!

In a previous post I talked about 2008 being the 20th anniversary of my becoming an English teacher. Anyone who's been in one of my classes or remembers me through Language in London / Camden College of English knows that my lifelong obsession is Chelsea Football Club. And this love of Chelsea has dominated my life since I was 5!!

Last night, at Stamford Bridge, we watched the mighty Blues beat Liverpool to get to the Champions League final. Getting into work this morning, I've read every newspaper report online, sent emails to a few friends, checked prices for getting to the final in Moscow and just smiled a lot. At some stage I need to think about work!

Come on you blues!

Stuart Rubenstein
Principal