Dutch Students Enjoy Three Weeks in Hastings

Each week, students from all over the world visit the college to study and explore Hastings and the South East.

We recently welcomed 15 students from the Netherlands to study and stay with us for three weeks. We caught up with Romana Hilgers to find out about her time at SCCH.

“Hi, I’m Romana, I’m 18, and I’m from the Noord-Brabant region in the south of Holland.

There are 15 of us in our group and we all study at Cingel College in Breda. We have lots of different interests, some of us study Travel and Tourism and the others study Catering.

We found out about this opportunity during our English lesson. Our college is really good at organising study trips, so when we had the opportunity to study in the UK, we couldn’t turn it down.

While I was in Hastings, I chose to study Travel and Tourism. The lessons were really interesting, and it was great to see how Travel is taught in the UK. We had lessons about world geography, popular tourism destinations, and practised cabin crew procedures in the College’s fuselage, which is a replica of a plane.

The other students studied Catering and spent some time in the College’s kitchens, learning to prepare and create desserts, they had a barista lesson where they made coffee, and they helped with front of house service in the college restaurant.

We also had English lessons together which were very useful because we were able to improve everything including speaking, writing, listening and grammar.

We all stayed with host families, who were all really nice and made us feel welcome. During the evenings and weekends we had lots of free time to do things that we enjoy. We explored Hastings, taking walks on the beach, visiting the arcades, and trying out some of the restaurants and bars.

During our first weekend here, we caught the train to Brighton, spent some time on the Pier and did some shopping. The second weekend, we were like proper tourists and visited London. We had a ride on the London Eye, visited Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, took some pictures at Piccadilly Circus and went to Trafalgar Square.

The only downside – three weeks wasn’t enough! We’ve all absolutely loved our time in Hastings and if it was possibly for us to stay longer, then we would.

I definitely want to come back. My plan is to come back in October for a short holiday, and after I’ve finished my education in Holland I am going to apply to study Travel and Tourism at SCCH for one year.

My long term plan is to work abroad. I love the English culture so studying here will be perfect. Who knows, my future may well be in England.”