The EEOP

Our London orientation begins for our new students 💚 please welcome our new students to England! 🇬🇧

We are finally back on Instagram 🤗 Some technical issues and a busy term has kept us away but we are so pleased to be back… and what better day for it!

International woman’s day! 🥰 We are so blessed to work with some wonderful women; our fabulous host mothers, teachers, colleagues and our students, of course!

We wanted to share these photos our amazing host mother, Allison, shared with us of a recent charity fundraiser she has helped organise with her “Liskeard ladies” and some help from our lovely students, Tessa and Laurie.

Allison and her friends organised a fantastic exhibition and sale of arts and crafts, as well as raffle and a “big breakfast” for the local community to come along too. All for a truly great cause, Cancer research. ❤️

We wish we lived closer as we would have loved to visit and see (and taste!) the delights!! I know Sue would have been captivated by all of the beautiful arts and crafts! Well done to Allison, Laurie, Tessa and all the wonderful ladies that arranged and helped! We are sorry we could not be there to support you in person but we are delighted to contribute with a donation, the least we can do after so much hard work!

This weekend we are in London for the weekend with our first group of 2022 students 🥰

We absolutely love our fun filled weekends with our students and we are currently enjoying a tour of London with our wonderful blue badge guide, Fritha. We have visited Buckingham Palace, St. Paul’s cathedral, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben and will make our way to the London eye for a flight and take in the breathtaking views across London 😍

Stay tuned to see what we will be doing this evening! 🤗

How lovely are these photos our wonderful host mum, Debbie, shared with us of her recent visit to the Eden project in Cornwall with her host daughter, Eliza.

The Eden project is an educational charity and social enterprise. Their global mission is to create a movement that builds relationships between people and the natural world to demonstrate the power of working together for the benefit of all living things.

Twenty years ago, a group transformed a china clay pit in Cornwall into a living theatre of plants and people. The visitor destination, cultural venue and global garden showcases our dependence on plants and demonstrates technological ingenuity and the regeneration of landscapes and livelihoods. It was their first ‘shop window’ for the future they want to make.

Today they are a growing movement, working on and developing projects locally, nationally and internationally. Their work is underpinned by the understanding that we need to live with the grain of nature and that everything is interconnected. What we do to the Earth we do to ourselves – let’s treasure and support a world we want to live in. A wonderful place to visit!

How beautiful are these photos our lovely student, Tessa, shared with us of her first week here in England?! 🥰

We have been so lucky with the sunshine these last few weeks and we love to see our students out exploring with their host families and friends making the very most of it! ☀️

Tessa and Laurie visited the local moors and beaches and we absolutely adore the lovely photo of their host dog having fun in the sea! 😍❤️🐶

Our school stay programme is so much more than just attending school in England. We strive to help each and every student build life long relationships with their host families and peers and to make the very most of their stay; exploring, making memories and having fun. The great thing is no matter what they do they are always improving their English!

It has been a wonderful first week of the spring term here at the EEOP. We have been very busy helping all our studnets settle in and get used to their new lives here in England with us and we are so thrilled to see so many of our students are out exploring and having fun already! 🤗

Our fabulously talented student, Justine, kindly shared these beautiful photos of her recent visit to Cambridge with her fellow students. We absolutely love that they took a punting boat along the river cam to see the breathtaking views of Cambridge.

Punting is an activity where people ride a small square-ended boat that has a flat bottom. A chauffeur then uses a long pole to push against the riverbed, which propels the boat in whichever direction you want to go. That propulsion is what’s known as “Punting.” Cambridge is surrounded by water, and there is lots to see, which is why tourists go for a punting adventure because they can take in the best views of the world-famous university.

The little boats or “Punts,” were built in medieval times to row in shallow water. Cambridge has marshy flatlands that the locals lived near to take advantage of hunting ducks, eel fishing, and transporting cargo until the nineteenth century. Punts don’t have a keel, which is a flat blade that sticks down into the water. They do not need it because they’re only meant to be rowed on very shallow water. This makes the boats more flexible to move around in narrow waters. Their stable and generous width allows plenty of room for passengers to sit and enjoy the ride.

Thank you Justine for sharing your adventure and wonderful photos with us! ☺️

Today we wanted to congratulate one of our lovely students, Alva! 🤗 Alva has been attending Brazilian jujitsu classes whilst here in England in her freetime. She is clearly very talented as she was asked to go to London to compete in a tournament and she placed second winning a silver medal!!! How amazing! We are so very proud of her.

Alva has been training with the world champion, Ricky Bellingham, and has also recently gained her blue belt! Well done Alva, we truly love to see our students flourish in all areas of their stay and she is a wonderful example of how do to this. 🤗

Here at The EEOP we are here to assist and support students with their school and host family life but also to help them embrace new hobbies, sports and activties to truly make the very most of their time here and make the most life changing memories. ☺️

What new hobbies and sports would you like to try?

Today is arrivals day for us and our new students! 🤗 We are currently on our way to Heathrow airport to greet everyone and are so looking forward to finally meet them all!

We realise that this is an exciting but daunting time for new students and we are so proud of each and every one of them for taking this step towards achieving their dreams! 🥰

We will be here to support, guide and assist them every step of the way and look forward to the amazing adventures that lay ahead for them all.

Swipe right to see the most wonderful message I recieved from one of my lovely students last term. 🤗 To hear we have helped make dreams come true is truly the best feeling for us and the reason we love what we do! 🥰

We would like to wish all of our EEOP family a very merry Christmas. Whether you are a student, host family, partner or a follower you are all part of our EEOP family 🤗 We hope you all have a truly wonderful time with your loved ones and make amazing new memories 🥰🎅🏻🎄

Our favourite time of year has finally arrived 🥰🎅🏻🎄

When you think of Christmas, one of the first images to spring to mind is probably a Christmas tree, covered in twinkly decorations, lights and tinsel.

(If you have a Christmas tree in your home, we'd love to see a picture of it!)

But where did the tradition of having a fir tree in our house and decorating it like this come from?

Many people think the tradition of Christmas trees in Britain started with the Victorians. This refers to the time when Queen Victoria was on the throne, from 1837 until 1901.

Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert were known to be very big fans of Christmas!

However, the tradition actually dates back further than that.

It originally came from Germany, where Prince Albert was actually born, and was introduced to England during the Georgian period, when King George III was on the throne.

He had a German wife called Charlotte, who it is thought used to decorate a tree for her family in the 1790s.

But Queen Victoria and Prince Albert are said to be the ones who made it extremely popular and fashionable to decorate a tree at Christmas like this, which is why a lot of people think that they started the tradition in Britain.

We hope you have all been having lots of festive fun and adventures 🤗 we certainly love this time of year! 🎅🏻🎄

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” 🥰🎄🎅🏻

Our favourite time is year is fastly approaching and we loved these photos our wonderful student, .swnke, sent us from her recent school trip to London. 🤗

What would Christmas, or even the weeks or months leading up to it, be without lights? They make our trees twinkle, fill our windows with a welcoming glow and set our streets alight with Christmas spirit.

One city that takes its Christmas lights very seriously is London – a bright and eventful destination all year round, of course, but even more so in the build-up to Christmas. One after the other, streets and squares are illuminated by elaborate light installations, which transform urban spaces and alter the atmosphere of the city.

The tradition began in 1954, on Regent Street, when local retailers and businesses – through the Regent Street Association – arranged for a display. The aim was to show that post-war London did not have to look “drab” around Christmas. In the 1950s and 1960s, the installations spread to other streets, with the Oxford Street Christmas display premiering in 1959. Quickly, the lights grew to be a key part of London’s festive calendar.