Hosted

I signed up for HostUK, which lets international students in the UK spend a day or a weekend with a British host family. The student only needs to pay for travel expenses, but everything else is taken care of. To register and apply for a visit, your university has to be a member of HostUK.


I spent the weekend at the home of Mr and Mrs B of Caister-on-Sea village in Norfolk, East Anglia. The retired schoolteachers (he of chemistry, her of biology) are in their 70s but keep busy, driving to and fro meetings of organizations they belong to. Despite the half-a-century age difference, I have things in common with Mr & Mrs B: traveling, photography and stamp collecting.


I took the train from Liverpool Street Station to Great Yarmouth, changing at Norwich. There were problems with the trains that morning and I arrived an hour later. Coming back to London, I took the National Express bus to Victoria Coach Station. Though I actually bought the bus ticket before I bought the ticket for Leeds, it cost me a lot more because I didn't get it online. Plus, the ticket guy didn't hear me correctly and gave me the wrong month and made me pay an additional £3 to correct his mistake. Never again.

Although the weather was pretty bad, Mrs B drove me around Yarmouth. The following day, we walked around the town center and had scones for elevenses at Palmers, the local department store. We got lucky and saw the lifeboat that the village is very proud of. The weather got better and by Sunday, we had clear blue skies.