Life at an English school in Clark: weekend markets, festivals, table tennis — and when friends graduate first (Chih-Jen, 20 weeks)
Some parts of life at an English school in Clark only show up if you stay a long time — like watching friends leave before you do. Taiwanese student Chih-Jen Tsai, on a 20-week Talk 4 Hybrid A course, first wrote about how lessons run (group classes at an English school in the Philippines). This second piece is about life outside the classroom: weekend markets and festivals, the table-tennis table, and friends about to graduate.
Life at an English school in Clark — weekend mornings at the market
…my favourite weekend mornings were spent wandering the traditional market near the school, watching real everyday Filipino life.
What's good is walking among people doing their shopping, not tourists. You ask prices, ask what things are, take your change. It's where the most short, practical English gets used.
Evenings at the food and music festival
In the evenings we all went to the food and music festival to eat, drink and listen to music — the perfect way to unwind.
Note the "we all". Classmates plan weekends together and go together. Another Taiwanese student who went to the same festival wrote about it in improve English speaking in the Philippines — Yen-Ju.
On campus — presentation prep and the table-tennis table
At school we gather to prepare presentations and discuss, and what I look forward to most after class is table tennis with my classmates: swinging wildly at that table is always full of laughter.
Talk 4 Hybrid A is four one-to-one and two group lessons a day (groups of up to eight). Group lessons centre on presentations and discussion, so time preparing together appears naturally — and when classmates from different countries share a table, the preparation is in English too.
Table tennis is a sport of short words and lots of laughter. "Nice shot", "One more", "Your serve" — English a newcomer can join in with from day one.
When friends graduate first
Knowing that the classmates I've lived and studied with are about to graduate makes me really sad — but it's exactly why I've made good friends here across nationalities.
This is the heart of the piece. Most English schools in the Philippines don't run on terms. At Talk, students start in different weeks, so every week someone arrives and someone leaves. A four-week student sees that once or twice; a 20-week student lives through it many times. You start as the one seeing friends off and, before long, become the one showing newcomers around.
The sadness is itself evidence: you got close enough to miss them — and they weren't from your own country.
What life at an English school in Clark teaches long-stay students
The usual worry is "will I make friends?" Stay long and another question appears: "what if my friends leave first?" Chih-Jen's piece answers it: in a school where people change every week, the one seeing friends off soon becomes the one welcoming new ones. For another long stay, see 6 months studying English in Clark — Yuna Takaoka.
Full of fun and full of friendship, this time abroad has given me the best memories!
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