英語リスニング - No.338 Boarding School
Eli talks about boarding school and growing up away from her family.
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英語リスニング - 本文
I've been at boardingschool since the age of 8, which is pretty young if you think aboutit. The reason I went there was because my family were living abroadand they thought it would probably be better for me to go to schoolin England. It was really fun actually. At sort of 8 to 13, my firstschool, I had a great time. I loved it. I hardly ever missed my parents.We had so much to do. This school was great. They organized all thesethings for us to do. Obviously we were there over the weekend. Someof the kids went home at the weekend. Some of the kids went home everydaybut us that had to stay over the weekend, we always had like loads ofstuff to do. There were rules obviously, but we were given a prettyfree hand within the sort of school grounds. We were left to do ourown thing. We had our own like common areas. We could bring in our music,we could, it was, you know, it was great and sort of the only bad memoryI really have of that is having to say goodbye to my parents all theway in Holland where we lived and I would have to say goodbye to themat the end at the airport and then fly over by myself to England andget picked up by an aunt and taken to school which was, that was theonly sort of thing I can remember that was bad about it,
but obviously as youget older, and I moved on to my secondary school, what we call it inEngland, yeah, I started to like it less and less, obviously as youget older, you sort of get more opinions about things, about people,how people should be, brought up, about the sort of freedom you shouldbe given, especially from the ages of maybe 13 to 16. You're very opinionatedand think you know best, but the school I went to was very rules orientated.It was very strict, and yeah, as sort of other people of a similar ageto me, started going out, you know to clubs, going out to pubs, anddoing what kids normally of that age do, we were stuck at school andhad to bed at like quarter past 10 on a Saturday night, which I thinkfor a 17, 18 year old kid is pretty unnatural. It's not a very sortof, I mean at that age I don't think it's a natural environment forchildren to be in. When I say children, you're not really a child anymoreat that age. You should be learning to, you know, cook for yourself,wash your own clothes, look after yourself, but of course all of thisis done for you at school. However, I have to say now, now that I'mliving in a different country at the moment. I'm living in Japan awayfrom all my friends, away from my family, and it really isn't a problemfor me at all. I sort of just slipped into life here very easily causeI so used to living alone.