Homestay provides English language students with the opportunity to speak English outside the classroom and the experience of being part of a British home.

What to Expect

    The host will provide accommodation and meals. Rooms will be cleaned and bedcovers changed at least Once a week. You will be given the house key and the host is there to offer help and advice as well as to take an interest in your physical and mental health.

Accommodation Zones

    Homestays are located in London mainly in Zones 2.3 and 4of the transport system. Most hosts do not live in the town center as much of central London is commercial and not residential. Zones 3 and 4 often offer larger accommodation in a less crowed area. It is very convenient to travel in London by Underground.

Meal Plans Available

·Continental Breakfast

·Breakfast and Dinner

·Breakfast, Packed Dinner

    It's important to note that few English families still provide a traditional cooked breakfast. Your accommodation includes Continental Breakfast which normally consists of fruit juice, cereal, bread and tea or coffee. Cheese, fruit and cold meat are not normally part of a Continental Breakfast in England. Dinners usually consist of meat or fish with vegetables followed by desert, fruit and coffee.

Friends

    If you wish to invite a friend over to visit,you must first ask your host's permission. You have no right to entertain friends in a family home as some families feel it is an invasion of their privacy.

Self-Catering Accommodation in Private Homes

    Accommodation on a room-only basis includes shared kitchen and bathroom facilities and often a main living room. This kind of accommodation offers an independent lifestyle and is more suitable for the long -stay student . However, it does not provide the same family atmosphere as an ordinary homestay and may not benefit those who need to practice English at home quite as much.

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    Having experienced a shocking electrical accident, which caused him to become both blind and deaf, James Franco's world became completely dark and quiet for almost ten years. The loss of sight and hearing threw him into such sorrow that he tried a few times to put an end to his life. His family, especially his wife, did their best to tend and comfort him and finally he regained the will to live.

    One hot summer afternoon, he was taking a walk with a stick near his house when a thunderstorm started all at once. He stood under a large tree to avoid getting wet, but he was struck by the lightning. Witnesses thought he was dead but he woke up 20 minutes later, lying face down in muddy water. He was trembling badly, but when he opened his eyes, he could hardly believe what he saw: a tree and a muddy road. When Mrs. Franco came running up to him, shouting to their neighbors to call for help, he could see her and hear her voice for the first time in nearly ten years.

    The news of James regaining his sight and hearing quickly spread and many doctors came to examine him. Most of them said that he regained his sight and hearing from the shock he got from the lightning. However, none of them could give a compellent answer as to why this should happen. The only reasonable explanation given by one doctor was that, since James lost his sight and hearing as a result of a sudden shock, perhaps, the only way for him to regain them was by another sudden shock.

    Listening to audio books(有声读物) is a really terrific way to enjoy all kinds of books during those times of the day when stopping to sit down and read a book is not an option. An audio book gives the listener hours and hours of entertainment or instruction, or sometimes both at the same time. They are great for people of all ages and make a long road trip a more interesting experience, instead of being boring and dull.

    The biggest benefit of an audio book is that it can be listened to anyplace and anytime. It is a favorite companion for people while they are traveling, commuting, exercising, shopping, working in the garden, or even dusting and vacuuming the house. Using headphones with your favorite audio book player allows you to listen to and absorb the information no matter what might be going on around you.

    Even when you are in a situation that is quiet and are able to enjoy a good audio book, there are still advantages of using your headphones. You can often improve your retention(记忆力) and comprehension of the material when you use headphones because they help reduce distractions from other noises and help you focus better.

    There are a number of different audio books these days that people can choose from. There are audio books on CDs, on audio cassettes(盒式磁带) and also as MP3s and any standard CD player, cassette recorder, or MP3 player that you might use to listen to music can function as an audio book player as well.

    No matter which kind of audio book you prefer to listen to, there is an ever-increasing variety of works that you can select from these days. Virtually any subject matter that is contained in printed books will have at least some audio version available as well. However, books on audio cassettes are starting to become rarer.

    One day a mime(哑剧演员) is visiting the zoo and tries to earn some money as a street performer. As soon as he starts to draw a crowd, a zookeeper pulls him into his office. The zookeeper explains that the zoo's most popular attraction, a gorilla(大猩猩), has died suddenly and the keeper fears that attendance(出席人数) at the zoo will fall off. He offers the mime a job to dress up as the gorilla. The mime accepts.

    The next morning the mime puts on the gorilla suit and enters the cage before the crowd comes. He soon discovers he can sleep, play and make fun of people and he draws bigger crowds than he ever did as a mime — the job he likes but loses.

    However, with days going by, he begins to notice that the people are paying more attention to the lion in the cage next to his. Not wanting to lose the attention of his audience, he climbs to the top of his cage, crawls across a partition(隔墙), and dangles(悬挂) from the top to the lion's cage. The lion gets angry at this. The scene is a fuel to the crowd.

    At the end of the day he is given a raise for being such a good attraction — well, this continues for some time. The crowds grow larger, and the mime's pay keeps going up.

    Then one day when he is dangling over the lion he slides and falls. The mime is terrified. He starts screaming “Help me!”, but the lion is quick. The mime soon finds himself flat on his back looking up at the angry lion and the lion says, “Shut up you fool! Do you want to get us both fired?”

    A great number of species make their home in the vast waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Although the entire ocean makes up an ecosystem, many smaller habitats are found within, including an open-water habitat off the coast of the Northern Atlantic Ocean known as the Sargasso Sea. Sargassum is an alga(海藻) that floats in masses that can continue for miles. The waters of the Gulf Stream push the water in a northward move into this area. This constant move and varying temperature support the accumulation of the brown-colored seaweed.

    The Sargasso Sea is so enormous that one method of information collection has not been enough for scientists to obtain an accurate picture of what takes place within this ecosystem. Researchers have needed to employ several methods of sampling. Methods such as dragging nets over the surface of the water and videotaping beneath areas of sargassum have served scientists well. Information collected has shown that the Gulf Stream pushes brown algae from open water into the Sargasso Sea area, creating a diverse floating habitat in an area that would otherwise not support that wildlife.

    In the most recent study of the sargassum community off the shores of North Carolina, eighty-one fish species were documented as using the area as a microhabitat. This is an increase from previous studies. The types of fish found here are both commercially and environmentally important. The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council is working to regulate the harvesting of sargassum. The Council hopes to have the area classified as an Essential Fish Habitat. Which would afford it certain protections.

    Further research needs to be done before scientists understand how to best protect the Sargasso Sea as well as understand how it goes about supporting so many important types of wildlife.

 German artist HA Schult is an unusual artist who uses trash(废物) to make sculptures. "We are living in the time of garbage," says Schult. "I created a thousand sculptures of garbage. They are a mirror of ourselves." Here, Schult was talking about his 1,000 trash sculptures in the form of humans. He first exhibited them in 1996 in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

"They are social sculptures," he explains. "They are not only sculptures for the eyes. They are sculptures to spread the idea that we live in the time of garbage." So far, Schult's social sculptures have been on show in Paris, in Moscow's Red Square, on the Great Wall of China, and in the desert next to the Pyramids of Giza near Cairo.

 HA Schult's work is unforgettable. Although his work has had a big influence on the art world, Schult remains modest about his creations. "Artists have to learn every time. We are not important. All that counts is the time in which we are living."

 Trash art has been around for years. But it seems that only the popular artists are regarded as true artists when working with trash. Why can't common people be considered artists when they use the same things and change them into some form of personal art? Maybe it's because we all have our own preset ideas of what art is and isn't, or whom artists are or should be.

 You can be an artist like Schult if you try. Look at used metal cans. What might be done with them? Imagine them in any number of new uses, or imagine them simply as an art form. What about boxes or clothing? Boxes can usually serve as new storage containers and houses for pets. And clothing? Imagine taking old clothes and turning them into hats or hanging organisers.